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Holy Blood, Holy Grail
by
Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln
HOL Y BLOOD, HOL Y GRAIL
PART ONE The Mystery 21
1 Village of Mystery 23
Rennes-leChateau and Berenger Sauniere 24
The Possible Treasures 32
The Intrigue 37
2 The Cathars and the Great Heresy 41
The Albigensian Crusade 42
The Siege of Montsegur 49
The Cathar Treasure 51
The Mystery of the Cathars 56
3 The Warrior Monks 59
Knights Templar The Orthodox Account 60
Knights Templar The Mysteries 75
Knights Templar- The Hidden Side 83
4 Secret Documents 94
PART TWO The Secret Society 1 09
The Order Behind the Scenes 1 1 1
The Mystery Surrounding the Foundation of the Knights Templar 116
Louis VII and the Prieure de Sion 1 1 9
The Cutting of the Elm' at Gisors 1 20
5 Ormus 123 The Prieure at Orleans 126
The "Head' of the Templars 1 28
The Grand Masters of the Templars 1 29
6 The Grand Masters and the Underground Stream 133
Rene d'Anjou 138
Rene and the Theme of Arcadia 140
The Rosicrucian Manifestos 144
The Stuart Dynasty 148
Charles Nodier and His Circle 154
Debussy and the Rose-Croix 158
Jean Cocteau 161
The Two John XXI I Is 164
7 Conspiracy through the Centuries 168
The Prieure de Sion in France 170
The Dukes of Guise and Lorraine 173
The Bid for the Throne of France 176
The Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement 178
Chateau Barberie 183
Nicolas Fouquet 185
Nicolas Poussin 187
Rosslyn Chapel and Shugborough Hall 190
The Pope's Secret Letter 192
The Rock of Sion 192
The Catholic Modernist Movement 194
The Protocols of Sion 198
The Hieron du Val d'Or 203
8 The Secret Society Today 209
Alain Poher212
The Lost King 213
Curious Pamphlets in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 216
The Catholic Traditionalists 21 9
The Convent of 1981 and Cocteau's Statutes 223
M. Plantard de Saint-Clair 230
The Politics of the Prieure de Sion 237
9 The Long-haired Monarchs 245
Legend and the Merovingians 245
The Bear from Arcadia 249
The Sicambrians Enter Gaul 250
Merovee and His Descendants 251
Blood Royal 253
Clovis and His Pact with the Church 254
Dagobert II 257
The Usurpation by the Carolingians 265
The Exclusion of Dagobert II from History 269
Prince Guillem de Gellone, Comte de Razes 271
Prince Ursus 274
The Grail Family 277
The Elusive Mystery 281
10 The Exiled Tribe 282
PART THREE The Bloodline 293
11 The Holy Grail 295
The Legend of the Holy Grail 297
The Story of Wolfram von Eschenbach 306
The Grail and Cabalism 318
The Play on Words 319
The Lost Kings and the Grail 321
The Need to Synthesise 324
Our Hypothesis 328
12 The Priest-King Who Never Ruled 331
Palestine at the Time of Jesus 338
The History of the Gospels 343
The Marital Status of Jesus 346
The Wife of Jesus 349
The Beloved Disciple 355
The Dynasty of Jesus 362
The Crucifixion 366
Who was Barabbas? 368
The Crucifixion in Detail 371
The Scenario 377
13 The Secret the Church Forbade 379
The Zealots 389
The Gnostic Writings 399
14 The Grail Dynasty 405
Judaism and the Merovingians 409
The Principality in Septimania 412
The Seed of David 41 9
15 Conclusion and Portents for the Future 421
Postscript 439
Appendix The Alleged Grand Masters of the Prieure de Sion 441
Bibliography 467
Notes and References 481
Index 517 Illustrations
Plates
I The village of Rennes-le Chateau 2 The Chateau d'Hautpoul 3 Berenger
Sauniere 4 The Villa Bethania 5 The Visigothic pillar in the church
at
Rennes-le
Chateau 6 The inscribed calvary near the entrance of the church at
Rennes-leChateau 7 The Tour Magdala, Rennes-leChateau 8 The Cathar
castle of Montsegur 9 A fifteenth-century print of Jerusalem 10 The
Tomb of David, Abbey of Notre Dame duMont de Sion, Jerusalem 1 1 The
Temple, Jerusalem 12 The octagonal tower of the castle of Gisors 13 The
sea wall of the castle of Athlit, Palestine 14 The church of the
Knights Templar, London 15 Interior of the Temple church, London 16 a
Seal of the Abbey of Notre Dame duMont de Sion b Seal of the Knights
Templar 1 7 The Abbey of Orval 1 8 The tomb near Arques 1 9 "La Fontaine
de Fortune', by Rene d'Anjou 20 "Et in Arcadia Ego', by Guercino 21 "Et
in Arcadia Ego', by Poussin 22 "Les Bergers d'Arcadie," by Poussin 23
"The Shepherds' Monument', Shugborough Hall 24 A seventeenth-century
Masonic tomb 25 The trepanned skull of Dagobert II 26 Pierre Plantard
de Saint-Clair 27 Sword hilt and scabbard found at the grave of
Childeric I 28 The crystal ball found in Childeric's grave 29 The gold
bees found in Childeric's grave 30 Garway church, Herefordshire 31
Graffiti on the piscina, Garway church 32 Jewish coin from the time of
Antiochus
VII
33 Window at Alet Cathedral 34 A fifteenth-century illumination
depicting fleur-de lys 35 Untitled painting of Godfroi de
Bouillon, by Claude
Vignon
Maps
1 The major sites of investigation in France 2 Rennes-leChateau and its
environs 3 The Languedoc of the Cathars 4The major castles and towns of
the Holy Land in the mid-twelfth century 5Jerusalem the Temple and the
area of Mount Sion in the mid-twelfth century 6 The Duchy of Lorraine
in the mid-sixteenth century 7 The Merovingian kingdoms 8 Judaea,
showing the only avenue of escape for the
Tribe of Benjamin 9 Palestine at the time of Jesus 10 The Jewish
princedom
Genealogies
1 The dukes of Guise and Lorraine 2 The Merovingian dynasty the kings 3
The Merovingian dynasty the counts of Razes 4 The Merovingian dynasty
the lost kings 5 The families of Gisors, Payen and Saint-Clair
Figures
1 The Plantard family crest 2 The cover design of the novel, Circuit 3
The coat of arms of Rennes-leChdteau 4 The official device of the
Prieure de Sion
Acknowledgments
We should like particularly to thank Ann Evans, without whom this book
could not have been written. We should also like to thank the
following: Jehan TAscuiz, Robert Beer, Ean Begg, Dave Bennett, Colin
Bloy, Juliet Burke,
Henri Buthion, Jean-Luc Chaumeil, Philippe de Cherisey, Jonathan
Clowes,
Shirley Collins, Chris Cornford, Painton Cowan, Roy Davies, Liz
Flower,
Janice Glaholm, John Glover, Liz Greene, Margaret Hill, Renee Hinchley,
Judy
Holland, Paul Johnstone, Patrick Lichfield, Douglas Lockhart, Guy
Lovel,
Jane McGillivray, Andrew MaxwellHyslop, Pam Morris, Lea Olbinson,
Pierre
Plantard de Saint-Clair, Bob Roberts, David Rolfe, John Saul, Gerard
de
Sede, Rosalie Siegel, John Sinclair, Jeanne Thomason, Louis Vazart,
Colin
Waldeck, Anthony Wall, Andy Whitaker, the staff of the British Museum
Reading Room and the residents of Rennes-leChateau.
Photographs were kindly supplied by the following: AGRACI, Paris, 35;
Archives Nationales, Paris, 16a; Michael Baigent, London, 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18,
24, 25, 26, 30, 31, 33; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, 27, 28, 29; Michel Bouffard,
Carcassonne, 4; W. Braun, Jerusalem, 11, 13;
British Library, London, 9, 16b, 34; British Museum, London (reproduced
by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum), 32; Courtauld
Institute of
Art, London, 10; Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth (reproduced by
permission of the Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement), 21 ; Jean
Dieuzaide/YAN photo, Toulouse, 8; Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome, 20; Patrick
Lichfield, London, 23; Henry Lincoln, London, 3;
Musee du
Louvre, Paris, 22; Ost. Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, 19;
Permission to quote extracts in copyright was granted by: Le Charivari
magazine, Paris for material from issue no. 18, "Les Archives du
Prieure de
Sion'; Victor Gollancz, London and Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc, New
York for specified material on pp. 334-36 from pp. 14-17 in The
Secret Gospel by Morton Smith copyright 1973 by Morton Smith; Random
House, Inc." New York for material from
Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, translated by Helen Mustard and
Charles
E. Passage, copyright 1961 by Helen Mustard and Charles Passage.
Introduction
In 1969, en route for a summer holiday in the Cevennes, I made the casual purchase of a
paperback. Le Tresor Maudit by Gerard de Sede was a mystery story a lightweight,
entertaining blend of historical fact, genuine mystery and conjecture. It might have
remained consigned to the post-holiday oblivion of all such reading had I not stumbled
upon a curious and glaring omission in its pages.
The "accursed treasure' of the title had apparently been found in the 1890s by a village
priest through the decipherment of certain cryptic documents unearthed in his church.
Although the purported texts of two of these documents were reproduced, the "secret
messages' said to be encoded within them were not. The implication was that the
deciphered messages had again been lost. And yet, as I found, a cursory study of the
documents reproduced in the book reveals at least one concealed message. Surely the
author had found it. In working on his book he must have given the documents more than
fleeting attention. He was bound, therefore, to have found what I had found. Moreover
the message was exactly the kind of titillating snippet of "proof that helps to sell a "pop'
paperback. Why had M. de Sede not published it?
During the ensuing months the oddity of the story and the possibility
of further discoveries drew me back to it from time to time. The
appeal was that of a rather more than usually intriguing crossword
puzzle with the added curiosity of de Slide's silence. As I caught
tantalising new glimpses of layers of meaning buried within the text of
the documents, I began to wish I could devote more to the mystery of
Rennes-leChateau than mere moments snatched from my working life as a
writer for television. And so, in the late autumn of 1970, I presented
the story as a possible documentary subject to the late Paul Johnstone,
executive producer of the BBC's historical and archaeological series
"Chronicle'.
Paul saw the possibilities, and I was dispatched to France to talk to de Sede and
explore the prospects for a short film.
During Christmas week of 1970 I met de Sede in Paris. At that first meeting, I asked the
question which had nagged at me for more than a year, "Why didn't you publish the
message hidden in the parchments? "His reply astounded me.
"What message?"
It seemed to me inconceivable that he was unaware of this elementary message. Why
was he fencing with me? Suddenly I found myself reluctant to reveal exactly what I had
found. We continued an elliptical verbal fencing match for a few minutes. It thus became
apparent that we were both aware of the message. I repeated my question, "Why didn't
you publish it?" This time de Sede's answer was calculated, "Because we thought it might
interest someone like you to find it for yourself."
That reply, as cryptic as the priest's mysterious documents, was the first clear hint that the
mystery of RennesleChateau was to prove much more than a simple tale of lost treasure.
With my director, Andrew Maxwell-Hyslop, I began to prepare a
"Chronicle' film in the spring of 1 971 . It was planned as a simple
twenty-minute item for a magazine programme. But as we worked de Sede
began to feed us further fragments of information. First came the full
text of a major encoded message, which spoke of the painters Poussin
and Teniers. This was fascinating. The cipher was unbelievably
complex. We were told it had been broken by experts of the French Army
Cipher Department, using computers. As I studied the convolutions of the code, I became
convinced that this explanation was, to say the least, suspect. I checked with cipher
experts of British Intelligence. They agreed with me. "The cipher does not present a valid
problem for a computer," The code was unbreakable. Someone, somewhere, must have
the key.
And then de Sede dropped his second bombshell. A tomb resembling that
in Poussin's famous painting, "Les Bergers d'Arcadie', had been found. He
would send details "as soon as he had them'. Some days later the
photographs arrived, and it was clear that our short film on a small
local mystery had begun to assume unexpected dimensions. Paul decided
to abandon it and committed us to a full-length "Chronicle' film. Now
there would be more time to research and more screen time to explore the story.
Transmission was postponed to the spring of the following year.
The Lost Treasure of Jerusalem? was screened in February 1972, and
provoked a very strong reaction. I knew that I had found a subject of
consuming interest not merely to myself, but to a very large viewing
public. Further research would not be self-indulgence. At some time
there would have to be a follow-up film. By 1974 I had a mass of new
material and Paul assigned Roy Davies to produce my second "Chronicle' film, The Priest,
the Painter and the Devil. Again the reaction of the public proved how much the story had
caught the popular imagination. But by now it had grown so complex, so far reaching in
its ramifications, that I knew the detailed research was rapidly exceeding the capabilities
of any one person. There were too many different leads to follow. The more I pursued
one line of investigation, the more conscious I became of the mass of material being
neglected. It was at this daunting juncture that Chance, which had first tossed the story so
casually into my lap, now made sure that the work would not become bogged down.
In 1975, at a summer school where we were both lecturing on aspects of literature, I had
the great good fortune to meet Richard Leigh.
Richard is a novelist and short-story writer with post-graduate degrees
in Comparative Literature and a deep knowledge of history, philosophy, psychology and
esoterica. He had been working for some years as a university lecturer in the United
States, Canada and Britain.
Between our summer-school talks we spent many hours discussing subjects of mutual
interest. I mentioned the Knights Templar, who had assumed an important role in the
background to the mystery of Rennes-leChateau.
To my delight, I found that this shadowy order of medieval
warrior-monks had already awakened Richard's profound interest, and he
had done considerable research into their history. At one stroke
months of work which I had seen stretching ahead of me became
unnecessary. Richard could answer most of my queries, and was as
10
intrigued as I was by some of the apparent anomalies I had unearthed.
More importantly, he too saw the fascination and sensed the
significance of the whole research project on which I had embarked. He
offered to help me with the aspect involving the Templars. And he
brought in Michael Baigent, a psychology graduate who had recently abandoned a
successful career in photo-journalism to devote his time to researching
the Templars for a film project he had in mind.
Had I set out to search for them, I could not have found two better qualified and more
congenial partners with whom to form a team. After years of solitary labour the impetus
brought to the project by two fresh brains was exhilarating. The first tangible result of our
collaboration was the third "Chronicle' film on Rennes-leChateau, The Shadow of the
Templars, which was produced by Roy Davies in 1979.
The work which we did on that film at last brought us face to face with the underlying
foundations upon which the entire mystery of Rennes-leChateau had been built. But the
film could only hint at what we were beginning to discern. Beneath the surface was
something more startling, more significant and more immediately relevant than we could
have believed possible when we began our work on the "intriguing little mystery' of what a
French priest might have found in a mountain village.
In 1972 I closed my first film with the words, "Something extraordinary is waiting to be
found .. . and in the not too distant future, it will be."
This book explains what that 'something' is and how extraordinary the discovering has
been.
11
7th
H.L. January 17 , 1981 Map 1 The Major Sites of Investigation in
France
BOUILLON J,
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CHATEAU BARBER IF (RUINS)
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MASSIF CENTRAL
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TOULOUSE \~\_ CARCASSONNE BIERS
ALET-LFS-RAINS r. 7-ARBONNE
RENNES LE-CHATEAU
MONTS9GUR
12
One The Mystery
13
1 Village of Mystery
At the start of our search we did not know precisely what we were looking for or, for that
matter, looking at. We had no theories and no hypotheses, we had set out to prove
nothing. On the contrary, we were simply trying to find an explanation for a curious little
enigma of the late nineteenth century. The conclusions we eventually reached were not
postulated in advance. We were led to them, step by step, as if the evidence we
accumulated had a mind of its own, was directing us of its own accord.
We believed at first that we were dealing with a strictly local mystery
an intriguing mystery certainly, but a mystery of essentially minor
significance, confined to a village in the south of France. We
believed at first that the mystery, although it involved many
fascinating historical strands, was primarily of academic interest. We
believed that our investigation might help to illumine certain aspects
of Western history, but we never dreamed that it might entail
re-writing them. Still less did we dream that whatever we discovered
could be of any real contemporary relevance and explosive contemporary relevance at
that.
Our quest began -for it was indeed a quest with a more or less
straightforward story. At first glance this story was not markedly
different from numerous other "treasure stories' or "unsolved
mysteries' which abound in the history and folklore of almost every
rural region. A version of it had been publici sed in France, where it
attracted considerable interest but was not to our knowledge at the
time accorded any inordinate consequence. As we subsequently learned,
there were a number of errors in this version. For the moment,
however, we must recount the tale as it was published during the 1 960s,
14
and as we first came to know of it." Rennes-leChateau and Berenger
Sauniere
On June 1st, 1885 the tiny French village of Rennes-leChateau received
a new parish priest. The cure's name was Berenger Sauniere. z He was a
robust, handsome, energetic and, it would seem, highly intelligent man
aged thirty-three. In seminary school not long before he had seemed
destined for a promising clerical career. Certainly he had seemed
destined for something more important than a remote village in the
eastern foothills of the
Pyrenees. Yet at some point he seems to have incurred the displeasure of his superiors.
What precisely he did, if anything, remains unclear, but it soon thwarted all prospects of
advancement. And it was perhaps to rid themselves of him that' his superiors sent him to
the parish of Rennes-leChateau.
At the time Rennes-leChateau housed only two hundred people. It was a
tiny hamlet perched on a steep mountaintop, approximately twenty-five
miles from
Carcassonne.
To another man, the place might have constituted exile a life sentence in a remote
provincial backwater, far from the civilised amenities of the age, far from any stimulus for
an eager and inquiring mind. No doubt it was a blow to Sauniere's ambition.
Nevertheless there were certain compensations. Sauniere was a native of the region,
having been born and raised only a few miles distant, in the village of Montazels.
Whatever its deficiencies, therefore, Rennes-leChateau must have been very like home,
with all the comforts of childhood familiarity.
Between 1885 and 1891 Sauniere's income averaged, in francs, the equivalent of six
pounds sterling per year -hardly opulence, but pretty much what one would expect for a
rural cure in late nineteenth-century France. Together with gratuities provided by his
parishioners, it appears to have been sufficient for survival, if not for any extravagance.
During those six years Sauniere seems to have led a pleasant enough life, and a placid
one.
He hunted and fished in the mountains and streams of his boyhood. He
read voraciously, perfected his Latin, learned Greek, embarked on the
study of
Hebrew. He employed, as housekeeper and servant, an eighteen-year old
peasant girl named Marie Denarnaud, who was to be his lifelong
15
companion and confidante. He paid frequent visits to his friend, the
Abbe Henri Boudet, cure-of the neighbouring village of
Rennes-les-Bains. And under Boudet's tutelage he immersed himself in the turbulent
history of the region a history whose residues were constantly present around him.
A few miles to the south-east of Rennes-leChateau, for example, looms
another peak, called Bezu, surmounted by the ruins of a medieval
fortress, which was once a preceptory of the Knights Templar. On a
third peak, a mile or so east of Rennes-leChateau, stand the ruins of
the chateau of
Blanchefort, ancestral home of Bertrand de Blanchefort, fourth Grand
Master of the Knights Templar, who presided over that famous order in
the mid-twelfth century. Rennes-leChateau and its environs had been on
the ancient pilgrim route, which ran from Northern Europe to Santiago
de
Compastela in Spain. And the entire region was steeped in evocative
legends, in echoes of a rich, dramatic and often bloodsoaked past,
For some time Sauniere had wanted to restore the village church of
Rennes-leChateau. Consecrated to the Magdalene in 1059, this dilapidated edifice stood
on the foundations of a still older Visigoth structure dating from the sixth century. By the
late nineteenth century it was, not surprisingly, in a state of almost hopeless disrepair.
In 1891, encouraged by his friend Boudet, Sauniere embarked on a modest
restoration, borrowing a small sum from the village funds. In the
course of his endeavours he removed the altar-stone, which rested on
two archaic
Visigoth columns.
One of these columns proved to be hollow. Inside
the cure found four parchments preserved in sealed wooden tubes. Two
of these parchments are said to have comprised genealogies, one dating
from 1244, the other from 1644. The two remaining documents had
apparently been composed in the 1780s by one of Sauniere's predecessors
as cure of
Rennes-leChateau, the Abbe Antoine Bigou. Bigou had also been personal
chaplain to the noble Blanchefort family who, on the eve of the
French
Revolution, were still among the most prominent local landowners.
The two parchments from Bigou's time would appear to be pious Latin
texts, excerpts from the New Testament. At least ostensibly. But on
one of the parchments the words are run incoherently together, with no
16
space between them, and a number of utterly superfluous letters have
been inserted. And on the second parchment lines are indiscriminately
truncated unevenly, sometimes in the middle of a word while certain
letters are conspicuously raised above the others. In reality these
parchments comprise a sequence of ingenious ciphers or codes. Some of
them are fantastically complex and unpredictable, defying even a
computer, and insoluble without the requisite key. The following
decipherment has appeared in French works devoted to
Rennes-leChateau, and in two of our films on the subject made for the
BBC.
BERG ERE PAS DE TENTATION QUE POUSSIN TENIERS GAR DENT LA CLEF PAX
DCLXXXI PAR
LA CROIX ET CE CHEVAL DE DIEU J'ACHEVE CE DAEMON DE GARDIEN A MIDI
POM MES
BLEUES
(SHEPHERDESS, NO TEMPTATION. THAT POUSSIN, TENIERS, HOLD THE KEY;
PEACE
681 . BY THE CROSS AND THIS HORSE OF GOD, I COMPLETE or DESTROY THIS
DAEMON OF THE GUARDIAN AT NOON. BLUE APPLES.)
But if some of the ciphers are daunting in their complexity, others are patently, even
flagrantly obvious. In the second parchment, for instance, the raised letters, taken in
sequence, spell out a coherent message.
A DAGO BERT II ROI ET A SION EST CE TRES OR ET IL EST LA MORT.
(TO DAGO BERT II, KING, AND TO SION BELONGS THIS TREASURE AND HE IS
THERE
DEAD.)
Although this particular message must have been discernible to Sauniere, it is doubtful
that he could have deciphered the more intricate codes.
Nevertheless, he realised he had stumbled upon something of consequence
and, with the consent of the village mayor, brought his discovery to
his superior, the bishop of Carcassonne. How much the bishop
understood is unclear, but Sauniere was immediately dispatched to Paris
at the bishop's expense with instructions to present himself and the
parchments to certain important ecclesiastic authorities. Chief among
these were the Abbe
Bieil, Director General of the Seminary of Saint Sulpice, and Bieil's nephew, Emile Hoffet.
At the time Hoffet was training for the priesthood.
Although still in his early twenties, he had already established an
17
impressive reputation for scholarship, especially in linguistics,
cryptography and palaeography. Despite his pastoral vocation, he was
known to be immersed in esoteric thought, and maintained cordial
relations with the various occult-oriented groups, sects and secret
societies which were proliferating in the French capital. This had
brought him into contact with an illustrious cultural circle, which
included such literary figures as Stephane Mallarme and Maurice
Maeterlinck, as well as the composer Claude Debussy. He also knew Emma
Calve, who, at the time of
Sauniere's appearance, had just returned from triumphant performances
in
London and Windsor.
As a diva, Emma Calve was the Maria Callas of her age.
At the same time she was a high priestess of Parisian esoteric sub-culture, and sustained
amorous liaisons with a number of influential occultists.
Having presented himself to Bieil and Hoffet, Sauniere spent three
weeks in
Paris. What transpired during his meetings with the ecclesiastics is unknown. What is
known is that the provincial country priest was promptly and warmly welcomed into
Hoffet's distinguished circle. It has even been asserted that he became Emma Calves
lover. Contemporary gossips spoke of an affair between them, and one acquaintance of
the singer described her as being "obsessed' with the cure. In any case there is no
question but that they enjoyed a close enduring friendship. In the years that followed she
visited him frequently in the vicinity of Rennes-leChateau, where, until recently, one could
still find romantic hearts carved into the rocks of the mountainside, bearing their initials.
During his stay in Paris, Sauniere also spent some time in the Louvre.
This may well be connected with the fact that, before his departure, he
purchased reproductions of three paintings. One seems to have been a
portrait, by an unidentified artist, of Pope Celestin V, who reigned
briefly at the end of the thirteenth century. One was a work by
David
Teniers although it is not clear which David Teniers, father or son. 3 The third was perhaps
the most famous tableau by Nicolas Poussin, "Les Bergers d'Arcadie' - "The Shepherds of
Arcadia'.
On his return to Rennes-leChateau, Sauniere resumed his restoration of
the village church. In the process he exhumed a curiously carved
flagstone, dating from the seventh or eighth century, which may have
18
had a crypt beneath it, a burial chamber in which skeletons were said
to have been found. Sauniere also embarked on projects of a rather
more singular kind. In the churchyard, for example, stood the
sepulchre of Marie, Marquise d'Hautpoul de Blanchefort. The headstone
and flagstone marking her grave had been designed and installed by the
Abbe Antoine Bigou - Sauniere's predecessor of a century before, who
had apparently composed two of the mysterious parchments. And the
headstone's inscription which included a number of deliberate errors in
spacing and spelling was a perfect anagram for the message concealed in
the parchments referring to Poussin and
Teniers. If one rearranges the letters, they will form the cryptic statement quoted above
alluding to Poussin and to Sion (see p. 26); and the errors seem to have been contrived
precisely to make them do so.
Not knowing that the inscriptions on the marquise's tomb had already
been copied, Sauniere obliterated them. Nor was this desecration the
only curious behaviour he exhibited. Accompanied by his faithful
housekeeper, he began to make long journeys on foot about the
countryside, collecting rocks of no apparent value or interest. He
also embarked on a voluminous exchange of letters with unknown
correspondents throughout France, as well as in
Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Austria and Spain. He took to collecting stacks of utterly
worthless postage stamps. And he opened certain shadowy transactions with various
banks. One of them even dispatched a representative from Paris, who travelled all the
way to Rennes-leChateau for the sole purpose of ministering to Sauniere's business.
In postage alone Sauniere was already spending a substantial sum more than his
previous annual income could possibly sustain. Then, in 1896, he began to spend in
earnest, on a staggering and unprecedented scale. By the end of his life in 1917 his
expenditure would amount to the equivalent of several million pounds at least.
Some of this unexplained wealth was devoted to laudable public works a
modern road was built leading up to the village, for example, and
facilities for running water were provided. Other expenditures were
more quixotic. A tower was built, the Tour Magdala, overlooking the
called the Villa
19
Bethania, which Sauniere himself never occupied. And the church was
not only redecorated, but redecorated in a most bizarre fashion. A Latin inscription was
incised in the porch lintel above the entrance:
TERRIBILIS EST LOCUS ISTE
(THIS PLACE IS TERRIBLE)
Immediately inside the entrance a hideous statue was erected, a gaudy
representation of the demon Asmodeus -custodian of secrets, guardian of
hidden treasures and, according to ancient Judaic legend, builder of
Solomon's Temple. On the church walls lurid, garishly painted plaques were installed
depicting the Stations of the Cross each was characterised by some odd inconsistency,
some inexplicable added detail, some flagrant or subtle deviation from accepted Scriptural
account. In Station VIII for example, there is a child swathed in a Scottish plaid. In
Station XIV, which portrays Jesus's body being carried into the tomb, there is a
background of dark nocturnal sky, dominated by a full moon. It is almost as if Sauniere
were trying to intimate something. But what? That Jesus's burial occurred after nightfall,
several hours later than the Bible tells us it did? Or that the body is being carried out of
the tomb, not into it?
While engaged in this curious adornment, Sauniere continued to spend extravagantly. He
collected rare china, precious fabrics, antique marbles.
He created an orangery and a zoological garden. He assembled a magnificent library.
Shortly before his death, he was allegedly planning to build a massive Babel-like tower
lined with books, from which he intended to preach. Nor were his parishioners neglected.
Sauniere regaled them with sumptuous banquets and other forms of
largesse, maintaining the life-style of a medieval potentate presiding
over an impregnable mountain domain. In his remote and well-nigh
inaccessible eyrie he received a number of notable guests. One, of
course, was Emma Calve. One was the French Secretary of
State for Culture. But perhaps the most august and consequential
visitor to the unknown country priest was the Archduke Johann von
Habsburg, a cousin of Franz-Josef, Emperor of Austria. Bank statements
subsequently revealed that Sauniere and the archduke had opened
20
consecutive accounts on the same day, and that the latter had made a
substantial sum over to the former.
The ecclesiastical authorities at first turned a blind eye. When Sauniere's former superior
at Carcassonne died, however, the new bishop attempted to call the priest to account.
Sauniere responded with startling and brazen defiance. He refused to explain his wealth.
He refused to accept the transfer the bishop ordered. Lacking any more substantial
charge, the bishop accused him of simony -illicitly selling masses and a local tribunal
suspended him. Sauniere appealed to the Vatican, which exonerated and reinstated him.
On January 17th, 1917, Sauniere, then in his sixty-fifth year, suffered a sudden stroke.
The date of January 17th is perhaps suspicious. The same date appears on the
tombstone of the Marquise d'Hautpoul de Blanchefort -the tombstone Sauniere had
eradicated. And January 17th is also the feast day of Saint Sulpice, who, as we were to
discover, figured throughout our story. It was at the Seminary of Saint Sulpice that he
confided his parchments to the Abbe Bieil and tmile Hoffet. But what makes Sauniere's
stroke on January 1 7th most suspicious is the fact that five days before, on January 1 2th ,
his parishioners declared that he had seemed to be in enviable health for a man of his
age. Yet on January 12th, according to a receipt in our possession, Marie Denarnaud had
ordered a coffin for her master.
As Sauniere lay on his deathbed, a priest was called from a neighbouring parish to hear
his final confession and administer the last rites. The priest duly arrived and retired into
the sick-room. According to eye-witness testimony, he emerged shortly thereafter, visibly
shaken. In the words of one account he "never smiled again'. In the words of another he
lapsed into an acute depression that lasted for several months. Whether these accounts
are exaggerated or not, the priest, presumably on the basis of Sauniere's confession,
refused to administer extreme unction.
On January 22nd Sauniere died un shriven The following morning his
body was placed upright in an armchair on the terrace of the Tour
Magdala, clad in an ornate robe adorned with scarlet tassels. One by
21
one, certain unidentified mourners filed past, many of them Map 2
Rennes-leChiteau and its Environs
0 KILOMETRES5
LIMOUX
O ALET-LES-RAINS
ARQUFS
"POVI71D1 tomb'
FSPtRAZACOUIZAR.il
COBLACHEPORT
P~ RENNES-LE-CHATEAURENNES-LES-BAINS
LAVALDIEU
kB ~~ l/'o P4oLE Bezu
QUILL AN
22
plucking tassels of remembrance from the dead man's garment. There
has never been any explanation of this ceremony. Present-day residents
of
Rennes-leChateau are as mystified by it as everyone else.
The reading of Sauniere's will was awaited with great anticipation. To everyone's surprise
and chagrin, however, it declared him to be utterly penniless. At some point before his
death he had apparently transferred the whole of his wealth to Marie Denarnaud, who had
shared his life and secrets for thirty-two years. Or perhaps most of that wealth had been
in Marie's name from the very beginning.
Following the death of her master, Marie continued to live a comfortable life in the Villa
Bethania until 1946. After the Second World War, however, the newly installed French
government issued a new currency. As a means of apprehending tax-evaders,
collaborators and wartime profiteers, French citizens, when exchanging old francs for new,
were obliged to account for their revenues. Confronted by the prospect of an explanation,
Marie chose poverty. She was seen in the garden of the villa, burning vast sheaves of old
franc notes.
For the next seven years Marie lived austerely, supporting herself on
money obtained from the sale of Villa Bethania. She promised the
purchaser,
Monsieur Noel Corbu, that she would confide to him, before her death, a "secret' which
would make him not only rich but also "powerful'. On January 29th, 1953, however, Marie,
like her master before her, suffered a sudden and unexpected stroke which left her
prostrate on her deathbed, incapable of speech. To Monsieur Corbu's intense frustration,
she died shortly thereafter, carrying her secret with her.
The Possible Treasures
This, in its general outlines, was the story published in France during the 1960s. This was
the form in which we first became acquainted with it. And it was to the questions raised by
the story in this form that we, like other researchers of the subject, addressed ourselves.
23
The first question is fairly obvious. What was the source of
Sauni&re's money? Whence could such sudden and enormous wealth have come? Was
the explanation ultimately banal? Or was there something more exciting involved? The
latter possibility imparted a tantalising quality to the mystery, and we could not resist the
impulse to play detectives.
We began by considering the explanations suggested by other researchers.
According to many of these, Sauniere had indeed found a treasure of some kind. This
was a plausible enough assumption, for the history of the village and its environs includes
many possible sources of hidden gold or jewels.
In prehistoric times, for example, the area around Rennes-leChateau was regarded as a
sacred site by the Celtic tribes who lived there; and the village itself, once called Rhedae,
derived its name from one of these tribes. In Roman times the area was a large and
thriving community, important for its mines and therapeutic hot springs. And the Romans,
too, regarded the site as sacred. Later researchers have found traces of several pagan
temples.
During the sixth century, the little mountain-top village was
supposedly a town with 30,000 inhabitants. At one point it seems to
have been the northern capital of the empire ruled by the Visigoths the
Teutonic people who had swept westwards from Central Europe, sacked
Rome, toppled the Roman
Empire and established their own domain straddling the Pyrenees.
For another five hundred years the town remained the seat of an
important county, or comte, the Comte of Razes. Then, at the beginning
of the thirteenth century, an army of northern knights descended on the
Languedoc to stamp out the Cathar or Albigensian heresy and claim the
rich spoils of the region for themselves. During the atrocities of the
so-called
Albigensian Crusade, Rennes-leChateau was captured and transferred from hand to hand
as a fief. A century and a quarter later, in the 1360s, the local population was decimated
by plague; and Rennes-leChateau was destroyed shortly thereafter by roving Catalan
bandits."
Tales of fantastic treasure are interwoven with many of these
historical vicissitudes. The Cathar heretics, for example, were
24
reputed to possess something of fabulous and even sacred value which,
according to a number of legends, was the
Holy Grail. These legends reportedly impelled Richard Wagner to make a
pilgrimage to RennesleChateau before composing his last opera,
Parsifal; and during the occupation of 1940-45 German troops, following
in Wagner's wake, are said to have undertaken a number of fruitless
excavations in the vicinity. There was also the vanished treasure of
the Knights Templar, whose
Grand Master, Bertrand de Blanchefort, commissioned certain mysterious excavations in
the vicinity. According to all accounts, these excavations were of a markedly clandestine
nature, performed by a specially imported contingent of German miners. If some kind of
Templar treasure were indeed concealed around Rennes-leChateau, this might explain
the reference to "Sion' in the parchments discovered by Sauniere.
There were other possible treasures as well. Between the fifth and
dynasty, which included King Dagobert II. Rennes-leChateau, in
Dagobert's time, was a
Visigoth bastion, and Dagobert himself was married to a Visigoth princess.
The town might have constituted a sort of royal treasury; and there are
documents which speak of great wealth amassed by Dagobert for military
conquest and concealed in the environs of Rennes-leChateau. If
Sauniere discovered some such depository, it would explain the
reference in the codes to Dagobert.
The Cathars. The Templars. Dagobert II. And there was yet another possible treasure
the vast booty accumulated by the Visigoths during their tempestuous advance through
Europe. This might have included something more than conventional booty, possibly
items of immense relevance both symbolic and literal to Western religious tradition. It
might, in short, have included the legendary treasure of the Temple of Jerusalem which,
even more than the Knights Templar, would warrant the references to "Sion'.
In A.D. 66 Palestine rose in revolt against the Roman yoke. Four years
later, in A.D. 70, Jerusalem was razed by the legions of the emperor,
under the command of his son, Titus. The Temple itself was sacked and
the contents of the Holy of Holies carried back to Rome. As they are
25
depicted on Titus's triumphal arch, these included the immense gold
seven-branched candelabrum so sacred to Judaism, and possibly even the Ark of the
Covenant.
Three and a half centuries later, in A.D. 410, Rome in her turn was
sacked by the invading Visigoths under Alaric the Great, who pillaged
virtually the entire wealth of the Eternal City. As the historian
Procopius tells us,
Alaric made off with "the treasures of Solomon, the King of the
Hebrews, a sight most worthy to be seen, for they were adorned in the
most part with emeralds and in the olden time they had been taken from
Jerusalem by the
Romans. "5
Treasure, then, may well have been the source of Sauniere's unexplained
wealth. The priest may have discovered any of several treasures, or he
may have discovered a single treasure which repeatedly changed hands
through the centuries passing perhaps from the Temple of Jerusalem, to
the
Romans, to the Visigoths, eventually to the Cathars and/or the
Knights
Templar. If this were so, it would explain why the treasure in question "belonged' both to
Dagobert II and to Sion.
Thus far our story seemed to be essentially a treasure story. And a treasure story even
one involving the treasure of the Temple of Jerusalem is ultimately of limited relevance
and significance. People are constantly discovering treasures of one kind or another.
Such discoveries are often exciting, dramatic and mysterious, and many of them cast
important illumination on the past. Few of them, however, exercise any direct influence,
political or otherwise, on the present unless, of course, the treasure in question includes a
secret of some sort, and possibly an explosive one.
We did not discount the argument that Sauniere discovered treasure. At
the same time it seemed clear to us that, whatever else he discovered,
he also discovered a secret an historical secret of immense import to
his own time and perhaps to our own as well. Mere money, gold or
jewels would not, in themselves, explain a number of facets to his
story. They would not account for his introduction to Hoffet's circle,
for instance, his association with Debussy and his liaison with Emma
Calve. They would not explain the Church's intense interest in the
matter, the impunity with which Sauniere defied his bishop or his
subsequent exoneration by the
26
Vatican, which seemed to have displayed an urgent concern of its own.
They would not explain a priest's refusal to administer the last rites
to a dying man, or the visit of a Habsburg archduke to a remote little
village in the Pyrenees. The Habsburg archduke in question has since
been revealed as Johann Salvator von Habsburg, known by the pseudonym
of Jean
Orth. He renounced all his rights and titles in 1889 and within two months had been
banished from all the territories of the Empire. It was shortly after this that he first
appeared in Rennes le Chateau.
Said officially to have died in 1890 but in fact died in Argentina in
1910 or 1911. See Les
Maisons Souveraines de L'Autriche by Dr. Dugast ROullle, Paris, 1967, page 191. Nor
would money, gold or jewels explain the powerful aura of mystification surrounding the
whole affair, from the elaborate coded ciphers to Marie Denarnaud burning her inheritance
of banknotes. And Marie herself had promised to divulge a 'secret' which conferred not
merely wealth but 'power' as well.
On these grounds we grew increasingly convinced that Sauniere's story
involved more than riches, and that it involved a secret of some kind,
one that was almost certainly controversial. In other words it seemed
to us that the mystery was not confined to a remote backwater village
and nineteenth-century priest. Whatever it was, it appeared to radiate
out from
Rennes-leChateau and produce ripples perhaps even a potential tidal wave in the world
beyond. Could Sauniere's wealth have come not from anything of intrinsic financial value,
but from knowledge of some kind? If so, could this knowledge have been turned to fiscal
account? Could it have been used to blackmail somebody, for example? Could
Sauniere's wealth have been his payment for silence?
We knew that he had received money from Johann von Habsburg. At the
same time, however, the priest's 'secret', whatever it was, seemed to
be more religious in nature than political. Moreover, his relations
with the
Austrian archduke, according to all accounts, were notably cordial. On
later career, seems to have been distinctly afraid of him, and to have
treated him with kid gloves the Vatican. Could Sauniere have been
blackmailing the Vatican? Granted such blackmail would be a
27
presumptuous and dangerous undertaking for one man, however exhaustive
his precautions. But what if he were aided and supported in his
enterprise by others, whose eminence rendered them inviolable to the
church, like the French Secretary of State for Culture, or the
Habsburgs? What if the Archduke Johann were only an intermediary, and
the money he bestowed on Sauniere actually issued from the coffers of
Rome?s
The Intrigue
In February 1972 The Lost Treasure of Jerusalem?" the first of our three films on
Sauniere and the mystery of Rennes-leChateau, was shown.
The film made no controversial assertions, it simply told the 'basic
story' as it has been recounted in the preceding pages, Nor was there
any speculation about an 'explosive secret' or highlevel blackmail. It
is also worth mentioning that the film did not cite smile Hoffet the
young clerical scholar in
Paris to whom Sauniere confided his parchments by name.
Not surprisingly perhaps, we received a veritable deluge of mail. Some of it offered
intriguing speculative suggestions. Some of it was complimentary. Some of it was dotty.
Of all these letters, one, which the writer did not wish us to publicise, seemed to warrant
special attention.
It came from a retired Anglican priest and seemed a curious and provocative non sequitur.
Our correspondent wrote with categorical certainty and authority. He made his assertions
baldly and definitively, with no elaboration, and with apparent indifference as to whether
we believed him or not. The 'treasure', he declared flatly, did not involve gold or precious
stones. On the contrary, it consisted of 'incontrovertible proof that the Crucifixion was a
fraud and that Jesus was alive as late as A.D. 45.
This claim sounded flagrantly absurd. What, even to a convinced
atheist, could possibly comprise 'incontrovertible proof that Jesus
survived the
Crucifixion? We were unable to imagine anything which could not be
disbelieved or repudiated which would not only comprise 'proof, but
'proof that was truly 'incontrovertible'. At the same time the sheer
28
extravagance of the assertion begged for clarification and
elaboration. The writer of the letter had provided a return address. At the earliest
opportunity we drove to see him and attempted to interview him.
In person he was rather more reticent than he had been in his letter,
and seemed to regret having written to us in the first place. He
refused to expand upon his reference to "incontrovertible proof and
volunteered only one additional fragment of information. This "proof,
he said, or its existence at any rate, had been divulged to him by
another Anglican cleric,
Canon Alfred Leslie Liney.
Liney, who died in 1940, had published widely and was not unknown.
During much of his life he had maintained contacts with the Catholic
Modernist
Movement, based primarily at Saint Sulpice in Paris. In his youth Liney had worked in
Paris, and had been acquainted with Emile Hoffet.
The trail had come full circle. Given a connection between Liney and
Hoffet, the claims of the priest, however preposterous, could not be
summarily dismissed. Similar evidence of a monumental secret was
forthcoming when we began to research the life of Nicolas Poussin, the
great seventeenth-century painter whose name recurred throughout
Sauniere's story. In 1 656 Poussin, who was living in Rome at the time,
had received a visit from the Abbe Louis Fouquet, brother of Nicolas
Fouquet,
Superintendent of Finances to Louis XIV of France. From Rome, the abbe dispatched a
letter to his brother, describing his meeting with Poussin.
Part of this letter is worth quoting.
He and I discussed certain things, which I shall with ease be able to
explain to you in detail things which will give you, through Monsieur
Poussin, advantages which even kings would have great pains to draw from him, and
which, according to him, it is possible that nobody else will ever rediscover in the centuries
to come. And what is more, these are things so difficult to discover that nothing now on
this earth can prove of better fortune nor be their equal.?
Neither historians nor biographers of Poussin or Fouquet have ever been
able satisfactorily to explain this letter, which clearly alludes to
29
some mysterious matter of immense import. Not long after receiving
it, Nicolas Fouquet was arrested and imprisoned for the duration of his life. According to
certain accounts, he was held strictly incommunicado and some historians regard him as
a likely candidate for the Man in the Iron Mask. In the meantime the whole of his
correspondence was confiscated by Louis XIV, who inspected all of it personally. In the
years that followed the king went determinedly out of his way to obtain the original of
Poussin's painting, "Les Bergers d'Arcadie'.
When he at last succeeded it was sequestered in his private apartments
at
Versailles.
Whatever its artistic greatness, the painting would seem to be innocent
enough. In the foreground three shepherds and a shepherdess are
gathered about a large antique tomb, contemplating the inscription in
the weathered stone: "ET IN ARCADIA EGO'. In the background looms a
rugged, mountainous landscape of the sort generally associated with
Poussin. According to
Anthony Blunt, as well as other Poussin experts, this landscape was wholly mythical, a
product of the painter's imagination. In the early 1970s, however, an actual tomb was
located, identical to the one in the painting identical in setting, dimensions, proportions,
shape, surrounding vegetation, even in the circular outcrop of rock on which one of
Poussin's shepherds rests his foot. This actual tomb stands on the outskirts of a village
called Arques -approximately six miles from Rennes-leChateau, and three miles from the
chateau of Blanchefort. If one stands before the sepulchre the vista is virtually
indistinguishable from that in the painting. And then it becomes apparent that one of the
peaks in the background of the painting is Rennes-leChateau.
There is no indication of the age of the tomb. It may, of course, have been erected quite
recently but how did its builders ever locate a setting which matches so precisely that of
the painting? In fact it would seem to have been standing in Poussin's time, and "Les
Bergers d'Arcadie' would seem to be a faithful rendering of the actual site.
According to the peasants in the vicinity, the tomb has been there for
as long as they, their parents and grandparents can remember. And
there is said to be specific mention of it in a memoire dating from
30
1709.8 According to records in the village of Arques, the land on
which the tomb starts belonged, until his death in the 1950s, to an
American, one Louis
Lawrence of Boston, Massachusetts. In the 1920s Mr. Lawrence opened the sepulchre
and found it empty. His wife and mother-in-law were later buried in it.
When preparing the first of our BBC films on Rennes-leChateau, we spent a morning
shooting footage of the tomb. We broke off for lunch and returned some three hours later.
During our absence, a crude and violent attempt had been made to smash into the
sepulchre.
If there was once an inscription on the actual tomb, it had long since been weathered
away. As for the inscription on the tomb in Poussin's painting, it would seem to be
conventionally elegiac Death announcing his sombre presence even in Arcadia, the idyllic
pastoral paradise of classical myth.
And yet the inscription is curious because it lacks a verb. Literally translated, it reads:
AND IN ARCADIA I .. .
Why should the verb be missing? Perhaps for a philosophical reason to preclude all
tense, all indication of past, present or future, and thereby to imply something eternal? Or
perhaps for a reason of a more practical nature.
The codes in the parchments found by Sauniere had relied heavily on
anagrams, on the transposition and rearrangement of letters. Could
"ET
IN
ARCADIA EGO' also perhaps be an anagram? Could the verb have been omitted so that
the inscription would consist only of certain precise letters? One of our television viewers,
in writing to us, suggested that this might indeed be so and then rearranged the letters into
a coherent Latin statement. The result was:
I "FEGO ARCANA DEI
(BEGONE! I CONCEAL THE SECRETS OF GOD)
We were pleased and intrigued by this ingenious exercise. We did not
realise at the time how extraordinarily appropriate the resulting
31
admonition was. 2 The Cathars and the Great Heresy
We began our investigation at a point with which we already had a
certain familiarity the Cathar or Albigensian heresy and the crusade it
provoked in the thirteenth century. We were already aware that the
Cathars figured somehow in the mystery surrounding Sauniere and
Rennes-leChateau. In the first place the medieval heretics had been
numerous in the village and its environs, which suffered brutally
during the course of the Albigensian
Crusade. Indeed, the whole history of the region is soaked in Cathar blood, and the
residues of that blood, along with much bitterness, persist to the present day. Many
peasants in the area now, with no inquisitors 1o fall upon them, openly proclaim Cathar
sympathies. There is even a Cathar church and a so-called "Cathar pope' who, until his
death in 1 978, lived in the village of Arques.
We knew that Sauniere had immersed himself in the history and folklore of his native soil,
so he could not possibly have avoided contact with Cathar thought and traditions. He
could not have been unaware that RennesleChateau was an important town in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, and something of a Cathar bastion.
Sauniere must also have been familiar with the numerous legends attached to the
Cathars. He must have known of the rumours connecting them with that fabulous object,
the Holy Grail. And if Richard Wagner, in quest of something pertaining to the Grail, did
indeed visit Rennes-leChateau, Sauniere could not have been ignorant of that fact either.
In 1890, moreover, a man named Jules Doinel became librarian at
Carcassonne and established a neo-Cathar church." Doinel himself wrote
prolifically on
Cathar thought, and by 1896 had become a prominent member of a local cultural
organisation, the Society of Arts and Sciences of Carcassonne.
32
In 1898 he was elected its 41 secretary. This society included a
number of Sauniere's associates, among them his best friend, the Abbe Henri Boudet.
And Doinel's own personal circle included Emma Calve.
It is therefore very probable that Doinel and
Sauniere were acquainted.
There is a further, and more provocative, reason for linking the
Cathars with the mystery of Rennes-leChateau. In one of the parchments
found by
Sauniere, the text is sprinkled with a handful of small letters eight, to be precise quite
deliberately different from all the others. Three of the letters are towards the top of the
page, five towards the bottom. These eight letters have only to be read in sequence for
them to spell out two words "REX IvtuNDt'. This is unmistakably a Cathar term, which is
immediately recognisable to anyone familiar with Cathar thought.
Given these factors, it seemed reasonable enough to commence our investigation with the
Cathars. We therefore began to research into them, their beliefs and traditions, their
history and milieu in detail. Our inquiry opened new dimensions of mystery, and
generated a number of tantalising questions.
The Albigensian Crusade
In 1209 an army of some 30,000 knights and foot-soldiers from Northern Europe
descended like a whirlwind on the Languedoc the mountainous north-eastern foothills of
the Pyrenees in what is now southern France. In the ensuing war the whole territory was
ravaged, crops were destroyed, towns and cities were razed, a whole population was put
to the sword. This extermination occurred on so vast, so terrible a scale that it may well
constitute the first case of "genocide' in modern European history. In the town of Beziers
alone, for example, at least 15,000 men, women and children were slaughtered wholesale
many of them in the sanctuary of the church itself. When an officer inquired of the pope's
representative how he might distinguish heretics from true believers, the reply was, "Kill
them all. God will recognise His own."
This quotation, though widely reported, may be apocryphal Nevertheless,
33
it typifies the fanatical zeal and bloodlust with which the atrocities
were perpetrated. The Map 3 The Languedoc of the Cathars
BORDEAUX
RC-fm
CA HORS
AGE~f/"
MOISSAC MONTAUBANAVIGNON
ALBI-NIMES
TOUL USE CA EMONTPELLIER
-MUO.ET
Ml NERVE BE:2I
CARCASSONNE "MARSEILLES
PAMKRS.X. MOT _A0. BONNE-
MIR~"POXLET
/XTERM LA VELA NET
rMCNTStGURi-QU IBP us _
AA~"RPIGNAN
same papal representative, writing to Innocent III in Rome, announced proudly that
"neither age nor sex nor status was spared'.
After Beziers, the invading army swept through the whole of the Languedoc.
Perpignan fell, Narbonne fell, Carcassonne fell, Toulouse fell. And, wherever the victors
passed, they left a trail of blood, death and carnage in their wake.
This war, which lasted for nearly forty years, is now known as the
Albigensian Crusade. It was a crusade in the true sense of the word. It had been called
by the pope himself. Its participants wore a cross on their tunics, like crusaders in
Palestine. And the rewards were the same as they were for crusaders in the Holy Land
remission of all sins, an expiation of penances, an assured place in Heaven and all the
booty one could plunder. In this Crusade, moreover, one did not even have to cross the
sea.
And in accordance with feudal law, one was obliged to fight for no more than forty days
assuming, of course, that one had no interest in plunder.
34
By the time the Crusade was over, the Languedoc had been utterly
transformed, plunged back into the barbarity that characterised the
rest of
Europe. Why? For what had all this havoc, brutality and devastation occurred?
At the beginning of the thirteenth century the area now known as the
Languedoc was not officially a part of France. It was an independent
principality, whose language, culture and political institutions had
less in common with the north than they had with Spain with the
kingdoms of
Leon, Aragon and Castile. The principality was ruled by a handful of noble families, chief
of whom were the counts of Toulouse and the powerful house of Trencavel. And within
the confines of this principality, there flourished a culture which, at the time, was the most
advanced and sophisticated in Christendom, with the possible exception of Byzantium.
The Languedoc had much in common with Byzantium. Learning, for example, was highly
esteemed, as it was not in Northern Europe. Philosophy and other intellectual activities
flourished; poetry and courtly love were extolled;
Greek, Arabic; and Hebrew were enthusiastically studied; and at Lunel
and
Narbonne, schools devoted to the Cabala the ancient esoteric tradition
of
Judaism -were thriving. Even the nobility was literate and literary, at a time when most
Northern nobles could not even sign their names.
Like Byzantium, too, the Languedoc practised a civilised, easy-going
religious tolerance in contrast to the fanatical zeal that
characterised other parts of Europe. Skeins of Islamic and Judaic
thought, for instance, were imported through maritime commercial
centres like Marseilles, or made their way across the Pyrenees from
Spain. At the same time, the Roman
Church enjoyed no very high esteem; Roman clerics in the Languedoc, by virtue of their
notorious corruption, succeeded primarily in alienating the populace. There were
churches, for example, in which no mass had been said for more than thirty years. Many
priests ignored their parishioners and ran businesses or large estates. One archbishop of
Narbonne never even visited his diocese.
Whatever the corruption of the church, the Languedoc had reached an
apex of culture that would not be seen in Europe again until the
35
Renaissance. But, as in Byzantium, there were elements of
complacency, decadence and tragic weakness which rendered the region
unprepared for the onslaught subsequently unleashed upon it. For some
time both the Northern European nobility and the Roman Church had been
aware of its vulnerability, and were eager to exploit it. The
Northern nobility had for many years coveted the wealth and luxury of
the
Languedoc. And the Church was interested for its own reasons. In the first place its
authority in the region was slack. And while culture flourished in the Languedoc,
something else flourished as well the major heresy of medieval Christendom.
In the words of Church authorities the Languedoc was "infected' by
the
Albigensian heresy, 'the foul leprosy of the South'. And although the
adherents of this heresy were essentially non-violent, they constituted
a severe threat to Roman authority, the most severe threat, indeed,
that Rome would experience until three centuries later when teachings
of Martin
Luther began the Reformation. By 1200 there was a very real prospect
of this heresy displacing Roman Catholicism as the dominant form of
Christianity in the Languedoc. And what was more ominous still in
the
Church's eyes, it was already radiating out to other parts of Europe, especially to urban
centres in Germany, Flanders and Champagne.
The heretics were known by a variety of names. In 1 1 65 they had been condemned by an
ecclesiastical council at the Languedoc town of Albi.
For this reason, or perhaps because Albi continued to be one of their
centres, they were often called Albigensians. On other occasions they
were called
Cathars or Cathares or Cathari. In Italy they were called Patarines. Not infrequently they
were also branded or stigmatised with the names of much earlier heresies Arian,
Marcionite and Manichaean. "Albigensian' and "Cathar' were essentially generic names.
In other words they did not refer to a single coherent church, like that of Rome, with a
fixed, codified and definitive body of doctrine and theology. The heretics in question
comprised a multitude of diverse sects many under the direction of an independent leader,
whose followers would assume his name.
And while these sects may have held to certain common principles, they
36
diverged radically from one another in detail. Moreover, much of our
information about the heretics derives from ecclesiastical sources like
the Inquisition. To form a picture of them from such sources is like
trying to form a picture of, say, the French Resistance from the
reports of the SS and Gestapo. It is therefore virtually impossible to
present a coherent and definitive summary of what actually
constituted
"Cathar thought'.
In general the Cathars subscribed to a doctrine of reincarnation and to
a recognition of the feminine principle in religion. Indeed, the
preachers and teachers of Cathar congregations, known as parfaits
("perfected ones'), were of both sexes. At the same time, the Cathars
rejected the orthodox
Catholic Church and denied the validity of all clerical hierarchies, or
official and ordained intercessors between man and God. At the core of
this position lay an important Cathar tenet the repudiation of "faith',
at least as the Church insisted on it. In the place of 'faith'
accepted at second hand, the Cathars insisted on direct and personal
knowledge, a religious or mystical experience apprehended at first
hand. This experience had been called "gnosis', from the Greek word
for 'knowledge', and for the
Cathars it took precedence over all creeds and dogma. Given such an emphasis on direct
personal contact with God, priests, bishops and other clerical authorities became
superfluous.
The Cathars were also dualists. All Christian thought, of course, can ultimately be seen
as dualistic, insisting on a conflict between two opposing principles good and evil, spirit
and flesh, higher and lower.
But the Cathars carried this dichotomy much further than orthodox
Catholicism was prepared to. For the Cathars, men were the swords that spirits fought
with, and no one saw the hands. For them, a perpetual war was being waged throughout
the whole of creation between two irreconcilable principles -light and darkness, spirit and
matter, good and evil.
Catholicism posits one supreme God, whose adversary, the Devil, is ultimately inferior to
Him. The Cathars, however, proclaimed the existence not of one god, but of two, with
more or less comparable status. One of these gods the 'good' one was entirely
disincarnate, a being or principle of pure spirit, unsullied by the taint of matter.
He was the god of love. But love was deemed wholly incompatible with
37
power; and material creation was a manifestation of power. Therefore,
for the Cathars, material creation the world itself was intrinsically evil. All matter was
intrinsically evil.
The universe, in short, was the handiwork of a 'usurper god', the god of evil or, as the
Cathars called him, "Rex Mundi', "King of the World'.
Catholicism rests on what might be called an "ethical dualism'. Evil, though issuing
ultimately perhaps from the Devil, manifests itself primarily through man and his actions.
In contrast, the Cathars maintained a form of "cosmological dualism', a dualism that
pervaded the whole of reality. For the Cathars, this was a basic premise, but their
response to it varied from sect to sect. According to some Cathars, the purpose of man's
life on earth was to transcend matter, to renounce perpetually anything connected with the
principle of power and thereby to attain union with the principle of love. According to other
Cathars, man's purpose was to reclaim and redeem matter, to spiritualise and transform it.
It is important to note the absence of any fixed dogma, doctrine or theology. As in most
deviations from established orthodoxy there are only certain loosely defined attitudes, and
the moral obligations attendant on these attitudes were subject to individual interpretation.
In the eyes of the Roman Church the Cathars were committing serious heresies in
regarding material creation, on behalf of which Jesus had supposedly died, as intrinsically
evil, and implying that God, whose 'word' had created the world "in the beginning', was a
usurper. Their most serious heresy, however, was their attitude towards Jesus himself.
Since matter was intrinsically evil, the Cathars denied that Jesus could partake of matter,
become incarnate in the flesh, and still be the Son of God. By some Cathars he was
therefore deemed to be wholly incorporeal, a 'phantasm', an entity of pure spirit, which, of
course, could not possibly be crucified. The majority of Cathars seem to have regarded
him as a prophet no different from any other a mortal being who, on behalf of the principle
of love, died on the cross. There was, in short, nothing mystical, nothing supernatural,
nothing divine about the Crucifixion if, indeed, it was relevant at all, which many Cathars
appear to have doubted.
38
In any case, all Cathars vehemently repudiated the significance of
both the Crucifixion and the cross -perhaps because they felt these doctrines were
irrelevant, or because Rome extolled them so fervently, or because the brutal
circumstances of a prophet's death did not seem worthy of worship. And the cross at
least in association with Calvary and the Crucifixion was regarded as an emblem of Rex
Mundi, lord of the material world, the very antithesis of the true redemptive principle.
Jesus, if mortal at all, had been a prophet of Ahs oR the principle of
love. And
AMOR, when inverted or perverted or twisted into power, became ROMA
Rome, whose opulent, luxurious Church seemed to the Cathars a palpable
embodiment and manifestation on earth of Rex Mundi's sovereignty. In
consequence the
Cathars not only refused to worship the cross, they also denied such sacraments as
baptism and communion.
Despite these subtle, complex, abstract and, to a modern mind perhaps,
irrelevant theological positions, most Cathars were not unduly
fanatical about their creed. It is intellectually fashionable nowadays
to regard the
Cathars as a congregation of sages, enlightened mystics or initiates in
arcane wisdom, all of whom were privy to some great cosmic secret. In
actual fact, however, most Cathars were more or less "ordinary' men and
women, who found in their creed a refuge from the stringency of
orthodox
Catholicism a respite from the endless tithes, penances, obsequies, strictures and other
impositions of the Roman Church.
However abstruse their theology, the Cathars were eminently realistic
people in practice. They condemned procreation, for example, since the
propagation of the flesh was a service not to the principle of love,
but to
Rex Mundi; but they were not so naive as to advocate the abolition of
sexuality. True, there was a specific Cathar "sacrament', or the
equivalent thereof, called the Consolamentum, which compelled one to
chastity. Except for the parfaits, however, who were usually ex-family
men and women anyway, the Consolumentum was not administered until one
was on one's death-bed; and it is not inordinately difficult to be
chaste when one is dying. So far as the congregation at large was
concerned, sexuality was tolerated, if not explicitly sanctioned. How
does one condemn procreation while condoning sexuality? There is
39
evidence to suggest that the Cathars practised both birth control and
abortion." When Rome subsequently charged the heretics with 'unnatural
sexual practices', this was taken to refer to sodomy. However, the
Cathars, in so far as records survive, were extremely strict in their
prohibition of homosexuality. "Unnatural sexual practices' may well
have referred to various methods of birth control and abortion. We
know Rome's position on those issues today. It is not difficult to
imagine the energy and vindictive zeal with which that position would
have been enforced during the Middle
Ages.
Generally, the Cathars seem to have adhered to a life of extreme devotion and simplicity.
Deploring churches, they usually conducted their rituals and services in the open air or in
any readily available building a barn, a house, a municipal hall. They also practised what
we, today, would call meditation. They were strict vegetarians, although the eating of fish
was allowed. And when travelling about the countryside, parfaits would always do so in
pairs, thus lending credence to the rumours of sodomy sponsored by their enemies.
The Siege of Montsegur
This, then, was the creed which swept the Languedoc and adjacent provinces on a scale
that threatened to displace Catholicism itself. For a number of comprehensible reasons,
many nobles found the creed attractive. Some warmed to its general tolerance. Some
were anti-clerical anyway. Some were disillusioned with the Church's corruption. Some
had lost patience with the tithe system, whereby the income from their estates vanished
into the distant coffers of Rome. Thus many nobles, in their old age, became parfaits.
Indeed, it is estimated that 30 per cent of all parfaits were drawn from Languedoc nobility.
In 1 145, half a century before the Albigensian Crusade, Saint Bernard
himself had journeyed to the Languedoc, intending to preach against the
heretics. When he arrived, he was less appalled by the heretics than
by the corruption of his own Church. So far as the heretics were
concerned,
40
Bernard was clearly impressed-by them. "No sermons are more Christian
than theirs," he declared, "and their morals are pure. '3
By 1200, needless to say, Rome had grown distinctly alarmed by the
situation. Nor was she unaware of the envy with which the barons of
Northern Europe regarded the rich lands and cities to the south. This
envy could readily be exploited, and the Northern lords would
constitute the
Church's storm-troops. All that was needed was some provocation, some excuse to ignite
popular opinion.
Such an excuse was soon forthcoming. On January 14th, 1208, one of
the
Papal Legates to the Languedoc, Pierre de Castelnau, was murdered. The
crime seems to have been committed by anticlerical rebels with no
Cathar affiliations whatever. Furnished with the excuse she needed,
however, Rome did not hesitate to blame the Cathars. At once Pope
Innocent III ordered a
Crusade. Although there had been intermittent persecution of heretics all through the
previous century, the Church now mobilised her forces in earnest. The heresy was to be
extirpated once and for all.
A massive army was mustered under the command of the abbot of Citeaux.
Military operations were entrusted largely to Simon de Montfort father of the man who was
subsequently to play so crucial a role in English history.
And under Simon's leadership the pope's crusaders set out to reduce the highest
European culture of the Middle Ages to destitution and rubble.
In this holy undertaking they were aided by a new and useful ally, a
Spanish fanatic named Dominic Guzman. Spurred by a rabid hatred of
heresy, Guzman, in 1216, created the monastic order subsequently named
after him, the
Dominicans. And in 1233 the Dominicans spawned a more infamous institution the Holy
Inquisition. The Cathars were not to be its sole victims. Before the Albigensian Crusade,
many Languedoc nobles especially the influential houses of Trencavel and Toulouse had
been extremely friendly to the region's large indigenous Jewish population. Now all such
protection and support was withdrawn by order.
In 1218 Simon de Montfort was killed besieging Toulouse. Nevertheless, the depredation
of the Languedoc continued, with only brief respites, for another quarter of a century. By
1243, however, all organised resistance in so far as there had ever been any had
effectively ceased.
41
By 1243 all major Cathar towns and bastions had fallen to the Northern
invaders, except for a handful of remote and isolated strong points. Chief among these
was the majestic mountain citadel of Montsegur, poised like a celestial ark above the
surrounding valleys.
For ten months Montsegur was besieged by the invaders, withstanding
repeated assaults and maintaining tenacious resistance. At length, in
March 1244, the fortress capitulated, and Catharism, at least
ostensibly, ceased to exist in the south of France. But ideas can
never be stamped out definitively. In his best-selling book,
Montaillou, for example, Emmanuel
Le Roy Ladurie, drawing extensively on documents of the period,
chronicles the activities of surviving Cathars nearly half a century
after the fall of
Montsegur. Small enclaves of heretics continued to survive in the
mountains, living in caves, adhering to their creed and waging a bitter
guerrilla war against their persecutors. In many areas of the
Languedoc including the environs of Rennes-leChateau the Cathar faith
is generally acknowledged to have persisted. And many writers have
traced subsequent
European heresies to offshoots of Cathar thought the Waldensians, for
instance, the Hussites, the Adamites or. Brethren of the Free Spirit,
the
Anabaptists and the strange Camisards, numbers of whom found refuge
in
London during the early eighteenth century.
The Cathar Treasure
During the Albigensian Crusade and afterwards, a mystique grew up
around the
Cathars which still persists today. In part this can be put down to
the element of romance that surrounds any lost and tragic cause that of
Bonnie
Prince Charlie, for example with a magical lustre, with a haunting nostalgia, with the "stuff
of legend'. But at the same time, we discovered, there were some very real mysteries
associated with the Cathars. While the legends might be exalted and romanticised, a
number of enigmas remained.
One of these pertains to the origins of the Cathars; and although this at first seemed an
academic point to us, it proved subsequently to be of considerable importance.
42
Most recent historians have argued that the Cathars derived from the
Bogomils, a sect active in Bulgaria during the tenth and eleventh centuries, whose
missionaries migrated westwards. There is no question that the heretics of the
Languedoc included a number of Bogomils.
Indeed a known
Bogomil preacher was prominent in the political and religious affairs
of the time. And yet our research disclosed substantial evidence that
the Cathars did not derive from the Bogomils. On the contrary, they
seemed to represent the flowering of something already rooted in French
soil for centuries. They seemed to have issued, almost directly, from
heresies established and entrenched in France at the very advent of the
Christian era. 4
There are other, considerably more intriguing, mysteries associated
with the Cathars. Jean de Joinville, for example, an old man writing
of his acquaintance with Louis IX during the thirteenth century,
writes, "The king (Louis IX) once told me how several men from among
the Albigenses had gone to the Comte de Montfort .. . and asked him to
come and look at the body of Our Lord, which had become flesh and blood
in the hands of their priest. '5 Montfort, according to the anecdote,
declared that his entourage may go if they wish, but he will continue
to believe in accordance with the tenets of
"Holy Church'. There is no further elaboration or explanation of this incident. Joinville
himself merely recounts it in passing. But what are we to make of that enigmatic
invitation? What were the Cathars doing? What kind of ritual was involved? Leaving
aside the Mass, which the Cathars repudiated anyway, what could possibly make "the
body of Our Lord .. . become flesh and blood'? Whatever it might be, there is certainly
something disturbingly literal in the statement.
Another mystery surrounds the legendary Cathar "treasure'. It is known
that the Cathars were extremely wealthy. Technically, their creed
forbade them to bear arms; and though many ignored this prohibition,
the fact remains that large numbers of mercenaries were employed at
considerable expense. At the same time, the sources of Cathar wealth
the allegiance they commanded from powerful landowners, for instance
43
were obvious and explicable. Yet rumours arose, even during the
course of the
Albigensian Crusade, of a fantastic mystical Cathar treasure, far
beyond material wealth. Whatever it was, this treasure was reputedly
kept at
Montsegur. When Montsegur fell, however, nothing of consequence was found.
And yet there are certain extremely singular incidents connected with the siege and the
capitulation of the fortress.
During the siege, the attackers numbered upwards of ten thousand. With this vast force
the besiegers attempted to surround the entire mountain, precluding all entry and exit and
hoping to starve out the defenders.
Despite their numerical strength, however, they lacked sufficient manpower to make their
ring completely secure. Many troops were local, moreover, and sympathetic to the
Cathars. And many troops were simply unreliable. In consequence, it was not difficult to
pass undetected through the attackers' lines. There were many gaps through which men
slipped to and fro, and supplies found their way up to the fortress.
The Cathars took advantage of these gaps. In January, nearly three months before the
fall of the fortress, two parfaits escaped. According to reliable accounts, they carried with
them the bulk of the Cathars' material wealth a load of gold, silver and coin which they
carried first to a fortified cave in the mountains and from there to a castle stronghold.
After that the treasure vanished and has never been heard of again.
On March 1st Montsegur finally capitulated. By then its defenders numbered less than four
hundred between 150 and 180 of them were parfaits, the rest being knights, squires, men-
at-arms and their families. They were granted surprisingly lenient terms. The fighting
men were to receive full pardon for all previous 'crimes'. They would be allowed to depart
with their arms, baggage and any gifts, including money, they might receive from their
employers. The parfaits were also accorded unexpected generosity.
Provided they abjured their heretical beliefs and confessed their "sins' to the Inquisition,
they would be freed and subjected only to light penances.
The defenders requested a two-week truce, with a complete halt to
hostilities, to consider the terms. In a further display of
44
uncharacteristic generosity, the attackers agreed. In return the
defenders voluntarily offered hostages. It was agreed that if anyone attempted to escape
from the fortress the hostages would be executed.
Were the parfaits so committed to their beliefs that they willingly chose martyrdom instead
of conversion? Or was there something they could not or dared not -confess to the
Inquisition? Whatever the answer, not one of the porfaits, as far as is known, accepted
the besiegers' terms. On the contrary, all of them chose martyrdom. Moreover, at least
twenty of the other occupants of the fortress, six women and some fifteen fighting men,
voluntarily received the Consolamentum and became parfaits as well, thus committing
themselves to certain death.
On March 15th the truce expired. At dawn the following day more than two hundred
parfaits were dragged roughly down the mountainside. Not one recanted. There was no
time to erect individual stakes, so they were locked into a large wood-filled stockade at the
foot of the mountain and burned en masse. Confined to the castle, the remainder of the
garrison was compelled to look on. They were warned that if any of them sought to
escape it would mean death for all of them, as well as for the hostages.
Despite this risk, however, the garrison had connived in hiding four
parfaits among them. And on the night of March 16th these four men,
accompanied by a guide, made a daring escape again with the knowledge
and collusion of the garrison. They descended the sheer western face
of the mountain, suspended by ropes and letting themselves down drops
of more than a hundred metres at a time.fi
What were these men doing? What was the purpose of their hazardous escape, which
entailed such risk to both the garrison and the hostages? On the next day they could
have walked freely out of the fortress, at liberty to resume their lives. Yet for some
unknown reason, they embarked on a perilous nocturnal escape which might easily have
entailed death for themselves and their colleagues.
According to tradition, these four men carried with them the
legendary
Cathar treasure. But the Cathar treasure had been smuggled out of
Montsegur three months before. And how much "treasure', in any case
45
how much gold, silver or coin could three or four men carry on their
backs, dangling from ropes on a sheer mountainside? If the four escapees were indeed
carrying something, it would seem clear that they were carrying something other than
material wealth.
What might they have been carrying? Accoutrements of the Cathar faith perhaps books,
manuscripts, secret teachings, relics, religious objects of some kind; perhaps something
which, for one reason or another, could not be permitted to fall into hostile hands. That
might explain why an escape was undertaken an escape that entailed such risk for
everyone involved.
But if something of so precious a nature had, at all costs, to be kept out of hostile hands,
why was it not smuggled out before? Why was it not smuggled out with the bulk of the
material treasure three months previously? Why was it retained in the fortress until this
last and most dangerous moment?
The precise date of the truce permitted us to deduce a possible answer to these
questions. It had been requested by the defenders, who voluntarily offered hostages to
obtain it. For some reason, the defenders seem to have deemed it necessary even
though all it did was delay the inevitable for a mere two weeks.
Perhaps, we concluded, such a delay was necessary to purchase time. Not time in
general, but that specific time, that specific date. It coincided with the spring equinox -and
the equinox may well have enjoyed some ritual status for the Cathars. It also coincided
with Easter. But the Cathars, who questioned the relevance of the Crucifixion, ascribed
no particular importance to Easter. And yet it is known that a festival of some sort was
held on March 14th, the day before the truce expired." There seems little doubt that the
truce was requested in order that this festival might be held. And there seems little doubt
that the festival could not be held on a date selected at random. It apparently had to be
on March 14th. Whatever the festival was, it clearly made some impression on the hired
mercenaries some of whom, defying inevitable death, converted to the Cathar creed.
Could this fact hold at least a partial key to what was smuggled out
of
Montsegur two nights later? Could whatever was smuggled out then have
been necessary, in some way, for the festival on the 14th? Could it
46
somehow have been instrumental in persuading at least twenty of the
defenders to become parfaits at the last moment? And could it in some fashion have
ensured the subsequent collusion of the garrison, even at the risk of their lives? If the
answer is yes to all these questions, that would explain why whatever was removed on the
1 6th was not removed earlier in January, for example, when the monetary treasure was
carried to safety. It would have been needed for the festival. And it would then have had
to be kept out of hostile hands.
The Mystery of the Cathars
As we pondered these conclusions, we were constantly reminded of the
legends linking the Cathars and the Holy Grail. 8 We were not prepared
to regard the
Grail as anything more than myth. We were certainly not prepared to assert that it ever
existed in actuality. Even if it did, we could not imagine that a cup or bowl, whether it held
Jesus's blood or not, would be so very precious to the Cathars for whom Jesus, to a
significant degree, was incidental. Nevertheless, the legends continued to haunt and
perplex us.
Elusive though it is, there does seem to be some link between the
Cathars and the whole cult of the Grail as it evolved during the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. A number of writers have argued that
the Grail romances -those of Chretien de Troyes and Wolfram von
Eschenbach, for example are an interpolation of Cathar thought, hidden
in elaborate symbolism, into the heart of orthodox Christianity. There
may be some exaggeration in that assertion, but there is also some
truth. During the
Albigensian Crusade ecclesiastics fulminated against the Grail romances, declaring them
to be pernicious, if not heretical. And in some of these romances there are isolated
passages which are not only highly unorthodox, but quite unmistakably dualist in other
words, Cathar.
What is more, Wolfram von Eschenbach, in one of his Grail romances, declares that the
Grail castle was situated in the Pyrenees an assertion which Richard Wagner, at any rate,
would seem to have taken literally.
According to Wolfram, the name of the Grail castle was Munsalvaesche -
a
47
Germanicised version apparently of Montsalvat, a Cathar term. And in
one of Wolfram's poems the lord of the
Grail castle is named Perilla. Interestingly enough, the lord of
Mpntsegur was Raimon de Pereille whose name, in its Latin form, appears
on documents of the period as Perilla. 9
If such striking coincidences persisted in haunting us, they must also,
we concluded, have haunted Sauniere -who was, after all, steeped in the
legends and folklore of the region. And like any other native of the
region, Sauniere must have been constantly aware of the proximity of
Montsegur, whose poignant and tragic fate still dominates local consciousness. But for
Sauniere the very nearness of the fortress may well have entailed certain practical
implications.
Something had been smuggled out of Montsegur just after the truce expired.
According to tradition, the four men who escaped from the doomed
citadel carried with them the Cathar treasure. But the monetary
treasure had been smuggled out three months earlier. Could the Cathar
'treasure', like the 'treasure' Sauniere discovered, have consisted
primarily of a secret? Could that secret have been related, in some
unimaginable way, to something that became known as the Holy Grail? It
seemed inconceivable to us that the
Grail romances could possibly be taken literally.
In any case, whatever was smuggled out of Montsegur had to have been
taken somewhere. According to tradition, it was taken to the fortified
caves of
Ornolac in the Ariege, where a band of Cathars was exterminated shortly
after. But nothing save skeletons has ever been found at Ornolac. On
the other hand, Rennes-leChateau is only half a day's ride on horseback
from
Montsegur. Whatever was smuggled out of Montsegur might well have been brought to
Rennes-leChateau, or, more likely, to one of the caves which honeycomb the surrounding
mountains. And if the 'secret' of Montsegur was what Sauniere subsequently discovered,
that would obviously explain a great deal.
In the case of the Cathars, as with Sauniere, the word 'treasure' seems
to hide something else knowledge or information of some kind. Given
the tenacious adherence of the Cathars to their creed and their
militant antipathy to Rome, we wondered if such knowledge or
48
information (assuming it existed) related in some way to Christianity
-to the doctrines and theology of Christianity, perhaps to its history and
origins. Was it possible, in short, that the Cathars (or at least certain
Cathars) knew something -something that contributed to the frenzied fervour with
which
Rome sought their extermination? The priest who had written to us had referred to
'incontrovertible proof. Could such 'proof have been known to the Cathars?
At the time, we could only speculate idly. And information on the Cathars was in general
so meagre that it precluded even a working hypothesis. On the other hand our research
into the Cathars had repeatedly impinged on another subject, even more enigmatic and
mysterious, and surrounded by evocative legends. This subject was the Knights Templar.
It was therefore to the Templars that we next directed our investigation.
And it was with the Templars that our inquiries began to yield concrete
documentation, and the mystery began to assume far greater proportions
49
than we had ever imagined. 3 The Warrior Monks
To research the Knights Templar proved a daunting undertaking. The voluminous
quantity of written material devoted to the subject was intimidating; and we could not at
first be sure how much of this material was reliable. If the Cathars had engendered a
welter of spurious and romantic legend, the mystification surrounding the Templars was
even greater.
On one level they were familiar enough to us the fanatically fierce warrior-monks, knight-
mystics clad in white mantle with splayed red cross, who played so crucial a role in the
Crusades. Here, in some sense, were the archetypal crusaders the storm-troopers of the
Holy Land, who fought and died heroically for Christ in their thousands.
Yet many writers, even today, regarded them as a much more mysterious
institution, an essentially secret order, intent on obscure intrigues,
clandestine machinations, shadowy conspiracies and designs. And there
remained one perplexing and inexplicable fact. At the end of their
two-century-long career, these white garbed champions of Christ were
accused of denying and repudiating
Christ, of trampling and spitting on the cross.
In Scott's Ivanhoe the Templars are depicted as haughty and arrogant
bullies, greedy and hypocritical despots shamelessly abusing their
power, cunning manipulators orchestrating the affairs of men and
kingdoms. In other nineteenth-century writers they are depicted as
vile satanists, devil-worshippers, practitioners of all manner of
obscene, abominable and/or heretical rites. More recent historians
have been inclined to view them as hapless victims, sacrificial pawns
in the high-level political manoeuvrings of Church and state. And
there are yet other writers, especially in the tradition of
Freemasonry, who regard the Templars as mystical adepts and initiates,
50
custodians of an arcane wisdom that transcends Christianity itself.
Whatever the particular bias or orientation of such writers, no one disputes the heroic zeal
of the Templars or their contribution to history.
Nor is there any question that their order is one of the most glamorous
and enigmatic institutions in the annals of Western culture. No
account of the
Crusades or, for that matter, of Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries will
neglect to mention the Templars. At their zenith they were the most powerful and
influential organisation in the whole of Christendom, with the single possible exception of
the papacy.
And yet certain haunting questions remain. Who and what were the
Knights
Templar? Were they merely what they appeared to be, or were they something else?
Were they simple soldiers on to whom an aura of legend and mystification was
subsequently grafted? If so, why? Alternatively was there a genuine mystery connected
with them? Could there have been some foundation for the later embellishments of myth?
We first considered the accepted accounts of the Templars the accounts offered by
respected and responsible historians. On virtually every point these accounts raised more
questions than they answered. They not only collapsed under scrutiny, but suggested
some sort of 'cover-up'. We could not escape the suspicion that something had been
deliberately concealed and a 'cover story' manufactured, which later historians had merely
repeated.
Knights Templar The Orthodox Account
So far as is generally known, the first historical information on the
Templars is provided by a Frankish historian, Guillaume de Tyre, who
wrote between 1 1 75 and 1 1 85. This was at the peak of the Crusades,
when Western armies had already conquered the Holy Land and established
the Kingdom of Jerusalem or, as it was called by the Templars
themselves, "Outremer', the "Land Beyond the Sea'. But by the time
Guillaume de Tyre began to write, Palestine had been in Western hands
for seventy years, and the Templars had already been in existence for
51
more than fifty. Guillaume was therefore writing of events which
predated his own lifetime events which he had not personally witnessed or experienced,
but had learnt of at second or even third hand. At second or third hand and, moreover, on
the basis of uncertain authority. For there were no Western chroniclers in Outremer
between 1 127 and 1 144. Thus there are no written records for those crucial years.
We do not, in short, know much of Guillaume's sources, and this may well call some of his
statements into question. He may have been drawing on popular word of mouth, on a
none too reliable oral tradition.
Alternatively, he may have consulted the Templars themselves and
recounted what they told him. If this is so, it means he is reporting
only what the
Templars wanted him to report.
Granted, Guillaume does provide us with certain basic information; and it is this
information on which all subsequent accounts of the Templars, all explanations of their
foundation, all narratives of their activities have been based. But because of Guillaume's
vagueness and sketchiness, because of the time at which he was writing, because of the
death of documented sources, he constitutes a precarious basis on which to build a
definitive picture. Guillaume's chronicles are certainly useful. But it is a mistake and one
to which many historians have succumbed to regard them as unimpugnable and wholly
accurate.
Even Guillaume's dates, as Sir Steven
Runciman stresses, 'are confused and at times demonstrably wrong'."
According to Guillaume de Tyre, the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ
and the Temple of Solomon was founded in 1118. Its founder is said to
be one
Hugues de Payen, a nobleman from Champagne and vassal of the count of
Champagne." One day Hugues, unsolicited, presented himself with eight
comrades at the palace of Baudouin I -king of Jerusalem, whose elder
brother, Godfroi de Bouillon, had captured the Holy City nineteen years
before. Baudouin seems to have received them most cordially, as did
the
Patriarch of Jerusalem the religious leader of the new kingdom and special emissary of
the pope.
The declared objective of the Templars, Guillaume de Tyre continues,
was, 'as far as their strength permitted, they should keep the roads
52
and highways safe .. . with especial regard for the protection of
pilgrims '.3 So worthy was this objective apparently that the king placed an entire wing of
the royal palace at the knights' disposal. And, despite their declared oath of poverty, the
knights moved into this lavish accommodation. According to tradition, their quarters were
built on the foundations of the ancient Temple of Solomon, and from this the fledgling
Order derived its name.
For nine years, Guillaume de Tyre tells us, the nine knights admitted
no new candidates to their Order. They were still supposed to be
living in poverty such poverty that official seals show two knights
riding a single horse, implying not only brotherhood, but also a penury
that precluded separate mounts. This style of seal is often regarded
as the most famous and distinctive of Templar devices, descending from
the first days of the
Order. However, it actually dates from a full century later, when
the
Templars were hardly poor if, indeed, they ever were.
According to Guillaume de Tyre, writing a half century later, the Templars were
established in 1118 and moved into the king's palace presumably sallying out from here to
protect pilgrims on the Holy Land's highways and byways. And yet there was, at this time,
an official royal historian, employed by the king. His name was Fulk de Chartres, and he
was writing not fifty years after the Order's purported foundation but during the very years
in question. Curiously enough, Fulk de Chartres makes no mention whatever of Hugues
de Payen, Hugues's companions or anything even remotely connected with the Knights
Templar. Indeed there is a thunderous silence about Templar activities during the early
days of their existence.
Certainly there is no record anywhere not even later of them doing anything to protect
pilgrims. And one cannot but wonder how so few men could hope to fulfill so mammoth a
self-imposed task. Nine men to protect the pilgrims on all the thoroughfares of the Holy
Land? Only nine? And all pilgrims? If this was their objective, one would surely expect
them to welcome new recruits. Yet, according to Guillaume de Tyre, they admitted no
new candidates to the Order for nine years.
None the less, within a decade the Templars' fame seems to have spread
53
back to Europe. Ecclesiastical authorities spoke highly of them and
extolled their Christian undertaking.
By 1 128, or shortly thereafter, a tract lauding their virtues and qualities was issued by no
less a person than Saint Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux and the age's chief spokesman for
Christendom. Bernard's tract, "In Praise of the New Knighthood', declares the Templars
to be the epitome and apotheosis of Christian values.
After nine years, in 1 127, most of the nine knights returned to Europe and a triumphal
welcome, orchestrated in large part by Saint Bernard.
In
January 1 128 a Church council was convened at Troyes court of the count of
Champagne, Hugues de Payen's liege lord at which Bernard was again the guiding spirit.
At this council the Templars were officially recognised and incorporated as a religious-
military order. Hugues de Payen was given the title of Grand Master. He and his
subordinates were to be warrior-monks, soldier-mystics, combining the austere discipline
of the cloister with a martial zeal tantamount to fanaticism a "militia of Christ', as they were
called at the time. And it was again Saint Bernard who helped to draw up, with an
enthusiastic preface, the rule of conduct to which the knights would adhere a rule based
on that of the Cistercian monastic order, in which Bernard himself was a dominant
influence.
The Templa~s were sworn to poverty, chastity and obedience. They were obliged to cut
their hair but forbidden to cut their beards, thus distinguishing themselves in an age when
most men were clean-shaven.
Diet, dress and other aspects of daily life were stringently regulated
in accordance with both monastic and military routines. All members of
the
Order were obliged to wear white habits or surcoats and cloaks, and
these soon evolved into the distinctive white mantle for which the
Templars became famous. "It is granted to none to wear white habits,
or to have white mantles, excepting the .. . Knights of Christ." So
stated the
Order's rule, which elaborated on the symbolic significance of this
apparel, "To all the professed knights, both in winter and in summer,
we give, if they can be procured, white garments, that those who have
54
cast behind them a dark life may know Map 4The Major Castles and Towns
of the Holy Land in the Mid-Twelfth
Century
Ton.- \s.r~a 1
- - TRIPOLI
-I
_- i
_l
Sidon I
I DAMASCUS
Beaofor< — _7yrej
-_A
-_Tibenae SraofGafilrr
-I
- Cacaarea
\
Jaffa A / / /
-JERUSALEM *
Aaralon -1
_1-_C~1
l)eadSca 1
\l
\ Kcrakl \ 1 \ 1
Ml nc real \ 1
\l
1 I
1 I
1 I
1 I
Petra ~
55
\1 \\ / / that they are to commend themselves to their creator by a
pure and white life. '5
In addition to these details, the rule established a loose administrative hierarchy and
apparatus. And behaviour on the battlefield was strictly controlled. If captured, for
instance, Templars were not allowed to ask for mercy or to ransom themselves. They
were compelled to fight to the death.
Nor were they permitted to retreat, unless the odds against them exceeded three to one.
In 1 1396 a Papal Bull was issued by Pope Innocent II a former
Cistercian monk at Clairvaux and protege of Saint Bernard. According
to this Bull, the
Templars would owe allegiance to no secular or ecclesiastical power other than the pope
himself. In other words, they were rendered totally independent of all kings, princes and
prelates, and all interference from both political and religious authorities. They had
become, in effect, a law unto themselves, an autonomous international empire.
During the two decades following the Council of Troyes, the Order expanded with
extraordinary rapidity and on an extraordinary scale.
When Hugues de
Payen visited England in late 1 128, he was received with "great
worship' by
King Henry I. Throughout Europe, younger sons of noble families flocked to enrol in the
Order's ranks, and vast donations in money, goods and land were made from every
quarter of Christendom. Hugues de Payen donated his own properties, and all new
recruits were obliged to do likewise. On admission to the Order, a man was compelled to
sign over all his possessions.
Given such policies, it is not surprising that Templar holdings
proliferated. Within a mere twelve months of the Council of Troyes,
the
Order held substantial estates in France, England, Scotland,
Flanders,
Spain and Portugal. Within another decade, it also held territory in
Italy,
Austria, Germany, Hungary, the Holy Land and points east. Although individual knights
were bound to their vow of poverty, this did not prevent the Order from amassing wealth,
and on an unprecedented scale. All gifts were welcomed. At the same time, the Order
was forbidden to dispose of anything not even to ransom its leaders. The Temple
received in abundance but, as a matter of strict policy, it never gave.
When Hugues de Payen returned to Palestine in 1 130, therefore, with an
56
entourage quite considerable for the time of some three hundred
knights, he left behind, in the custody of other recruits, vast tracts of European territory.
In 1 146 the Templars adopted the famous splayed red cross the cross pat tee With this
device emblazoned on their mantles, the knights accompanied King Louis VII of France on
the Second Crusade. Here they established their reputation for martial zeal coupled with
an almost insane foolhardiness, and a fierce arrogance as well. On the whole, however,
they were magnificently disciplined -the most disciplined fighting force in the world at the
time. The French king himself wrote that it was the Templars alone who prevented the
Second Crusade ill-conceived and mismanaged as it was from degenerating into a total
debacle.
During the next hundred years the Templars became a power with
international influence. They were constantly engaged in high-level
diplomacy between nobles and monarchs throughout the Western world and
the
Holy Land. In England, for example, the Master of the Temple was regularly called to the
king's Parliament, and was regarded as head of all religious orders, taking precedence
over all priors and abbots in the land. Maintaining close links with both Henry II and
Thomas a Becket, the Templars were instrumental in trying to reconcile the sovereign and
his estranged archbishop. Successive English kings, including King John, often resided in
the Temple's London preceptory, and the Master of the Order stood by the monarch's side
at the signing of the Magna Carta."
Nor was the Order's political involvement confined to Christendom alone.
Close links were forged with the Muslim world as well the world so
often opposed on the battlefield and the Templars commanded a respect
from
Saracen leaders exceeding that accorded any other Europeans. Secret connections were
also maintained with the Hashishim or Assassins, the famous sect of militant and often
fanatical adepts who were Islam's equivalent of the Templars. The Hashishim paid tribute
to the Templars and were rumoured to be in their employ.
On almost every political level the Templars acted as official arbiters
in disputes, and even kings submitted to their authority. In 1252
Henry III of
57
England dared to challenge them, threatening to confiscate certain of
their domains. "You
Templars .. . have so many liberties and charters that your enormous
possessions make you rave with pride and haughtiness. What was
imprudently given must therefore be prudently revoked; and what was
inconsiderately bestowed must be considerately recalled." The Master
of the Order replied,
"What say est thou, O King? Far be it that thy mouth should utter so disagreeable and
silly a word. So long as thou dost exercise justice, thou wilt reign. But if thou infringe it,
thou wilt cease to be King." It is difficult to convey to the modern mind the enormity and
audacity of this statement. Implicitly the Master is taking for his Order and himself a
power that not even the papacy dared explicitly claim the power to make or depose
monarchs.
At the same time, the Templars' interests extended beyond war,
diplomacy and political intrigue. In effect they created and
established the institution of modern banking. By lending vast sums to
destitute monarchs they became the bankers for every throne in Europe
and for certain Muslim potentates as well. With their network of
preceptories throughout Europe and the Middle East, they also
organised, at modest interest rates, the safe and efficient transfer of
money for merchant traders, a class which became increasingly dependent
upon them. Money deposited in one city, for example, could be claimed
and withdrawn in another, by means of promissory notes inscribed in
intricate codes. The Templars thus became the primary money-changers
of the age, and the Paris preceptory became the centre of
European finance. 9 It is even probable that the cheque, as we know and use it today, was
invented by the Order.
And the Templars traded not only in money, but in thought as well. Through their
sustained and sympathetic contact with Islamic and Judaic culture, they came to act as a
clearing-house for new ideas, new dimensions of knowledge, new sciences. They
enjoyed a veritable monopoly on the best and most advanced technology of their age the
best that could be produced by armourers, leather-workers, stone masons military
architects and engineers.
They contributed to the development of surveying, map-making,
road-building and navigation. They possessed their own sea-ports,
58
shipyards and fleet a fleet both commercial and military, which was
among the first to use the magnetic compass. And as soldiers, the Templars' need to
treat wounds and illness made them adept in the use of drugs. The Order maintained its
own hospitals with its own physicians and surgeons whose use of mould extract suggests
an understanding of the properties of antibiotics. Modern principles of hygiene and
cleanliness were understood. And with an understanding also in advance of their time
they regarded epilepsy not as demonic possession but as a controllable disease. '
Inspired by its own accomplishments, the Temple in Europe grew increasingly wealthy,
powerful and complacent. Not surprisingly perhaps, it also grew increasingly arrogant,
brutal and corrupt. "To drink like a Templar' became a cliche of the time. And certain
sources assert that the Order made a point of recruiting excommunicated knights.
But while the Templars attained both prosperity and notoriety in
Europe, the situation in the Holy Land had seriously deteriorated. In
11 85 King
Baudouin IV of Jerusalem died. In the dynastic squabble that
followed,
Gerard de Ridefort, Grand Master of the Temple, betrayed an oath made
to the dead monarch, and thereby brought the European community in
Palestine to the brink of civil war. Nor was this Ridefort's only
questionable action. His cavalier attitude towards the Saracens
precipitated the rupture of a long-standing truce, and provoked a new
cycle of hostilities. Then, in
July 1 187, Ridefort led his knights, along with the rest of the
Christian army, into a rash, misconceived and, as it transpired,
disastrous battle at
Hattin. The Christian forces were virtually annihilated; and two
months later Jerusalem itself captured nearly a century before was
again in
Saracen hands.
During the following century the situation became increasingly
hopeless. By 1291 nearly the whole of Outremer had fallen, and the
Holy Land was almost entirely under Muslim control. Only Acre
remained, and in May 1291 this last fortress was lost as well. In
defending the doomed city, the Templars showed themselves at their most
heroic. The Grand Master himself, though severely wounded, continued
fighting until his death. As there was only limited space in the
59
Order's galleys, the women and children were evacuated, while all
knights, even the wounded, chose to remain behind. When the last bastion in Arce fell, it
did so with apocalyptic intensity, the walls collapsing and burying attackers and defenders
alike.
The Templars established their new headquarters in Cyprus; but with the loss of the Holy
Land, they had effectively been deprived of their raison d'etre. As there were no longer
any accessible infidel lands to conquer, the Order began to turn its attention towards
Europe, hoping to find there a justification for its continued existence.
A century before, the Templars had presided over the foundation of
another chivalric, religious-military order, the Teutonic Knights. The
latter were active in small numbers in the Middle East, but by the
mid-thirteenth century had turned their attention to the north-eastern
frontiers of
Christendom. Here they had carved out an independent principality for
themselves the Ordenstoat or Ordensland, which encompassed almost the
whole of the eastern Baltic. In this principality which extended
from
Prussia to the Gulf of Finland and what is now Russian soil the
Teutonic
Knights enjoyed an unchallenged sovereignty, far from the reach of both secular and
ecclesiastical control.
From the very inception of the Ordenstaat, the Templars had envied the
independence and immunity of their kindred order. After the fall of
the
Holy Land, they thought increasingly of a state of their own in which
they might exercise the same untrammelled authority and autonomy as the
Teutonic
Knights. Unlike the Teutonic Knights, however, the Templars were not
interested in the harsh wilderness of Eastern Europe. By now they were
too accustomed to luxury and opulence. Accordingly, they dreamed of
founding their state on more accessible, more congenial soil that of
the
Languedoc."
From its earliest years, the Temple had maintained a certain warm
rapport with the Cathars, especially in the Languedoc. Many wealthy
landowners Cathars themselves or sympathetic to the Cathars had donated
vast tracts of land to the Order. According to a recent writer, at
least one of the co-founders of the Temple was a Cathar. This seems
somewhat improbable, but it is beyond dispute that Bertrand de
60
Blanchefort, fourth Grand Master of the Order, came from a Cathar
family. Forty years after Bertrand's death, his descendants were
fighting side by side with other Cathar lords against the Northern
invaders of Simon de Montfort. '2
During the Albigensian Crusade, the Templars ostensibly remained
neutral, confining themselves to the role of witnesses. At the same
time, however, the Grand Master at the time would seem to have made the
Order's position clear when he declared there was in fact only one true
Crusade the
Crusade against the Saracens. Moreover, a careful examination of
contemporary accounts reveals that the Templars provided a haven for
many
Cathar refugees."? On occasion they do seem to have taken up arms on
these refugees' behalf. And an inspection of the Order's rolls towards
the beginning of the Albigensian Crusade reveals a major influx of
Cathars into the Temple's ranks where not even Simon de Montfort's
crusaders would dare to challenge them. Indeed, the Templar rolls of
the period show that a significant proportion of the Order's
high-ranking dignitaries were from
Cathar families. 14 In the Languedoc Temple officials were more
frequently
Cathar than Catholic. What is more, the Cathar nobles who enrolled in
the
Temple do not appear to have moved about the world as much as their
Catholic brethren. On the contrary, they appear to have remained for the most part in the
Languedoc, thus creating for the Order a long-standing and stable base in the region.
By virtue of their contact with Islamic and Judaic cultures, the
Templars had already absorbed a great many ideas alien to orthodox
Roman
Christianity. Templar Masters, for example, often employed Arab secretaries, and many
Templars, having learnt Arabic in captivity, were fluent in the language. A close rapport
was also maintained with Jewish communities, financial interests and scholarship. The
Templars had thus been exposed to many things Rome would not ordinarily countenance.
Through the influx of Cathar recruits, they were now exposed to Gnostic dualism as well if,
indeed, they had ever really been strangers to it.
By 1306 Philippe IV of France Philippe le Bel was acutely anxious to rid his territory of the
Templars. They were arrogant and unruly.
61
They were efficient and highly trained, a professional military force
much stronger and better organised than any he himself could muster.
They were firmly established throughout
France, and by this time even their allegiance to the pope was only nominal.
Philippe had no control over the Order. He owed it money. He had been humiliated
when, fleeing a rebellious Paris mob, he was obliged to seek abject refuge in the Temple's
preceptory. He coveted the Templars' immense wealth, which his sojourn in their
premises made flagrantly apparent to him.
And, having applied to join the Order as a postulant, he had suffered the indignity of being
haughtily rejected. These factors together, of course, with the alarming prospect of an
independent Templar state at his back door were sufficient to spur the king to action. And
heresy was a convenient excuse.
Philippe first had to enlist the co-operation of the pope, to whom, in theory at any rate, the
Templars owed allegiance and obedience. Between 1303 and 1305, the French king and
his ministers engineered the kidnapping and death of one pope (Boniface VIII) and quite
possibly the murder by poison of another (Benedict XI). Then, in 1305, Philippe managed
to secure the election of his own candidate, the archbishop of Bordeaux, to the vacant
papal throne. The new pontiff took the name Clement V. Indebted as he was to Philippe's
influence, he could hardly refuse the king's demands.
Philippe planned his moves carefully. A list of charges was compiled, partly from the
king's spies who had infiltrated the Order, partly from the voluntary confession of an
alleged renegade Templar. Armed with these accusations, Philippe could at last move;
and when he delivered his blow, it was sudden, swift, efficient and lethal. In a security
operation worthy of the SS or Gestapo, the king issued sealed and secret orders to his
seneschals throughout the country. These orders were to be opened everywhere
simultaneously and implemented at once.
At dawn on Friday,
October 13th, 1307, all Templars in France were to be seized and placed
under arrest by the king's men, their preceptories placed under royal
sequestration, their goods confiscated. But although Philippe's
objective of surprise might seem to have been achieved, his primary
interest the
62
Order's immense wealth eluded him. It was never found, and what
became of the fabulous 'treasure of the Templars' has remained a mystery.
In fact it is doubtful whether Philippe's surprise attack on the Order was as unexpected as
he, or subsequent historians, believed. There is considerable evidence to suggest the
Templars received some kind of advance warning. Shortly before the arrests, for
example, the Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, called in many of the Order's books and
extant rules, and had them burnt. A knight who withdrew from the Order at this time was
told by the treasurer that he was extremely 'wise', as catastrophe was imminent. An
official note was circulated to all French preceptories, stressing that no information
regarding the Order's customs and rituals was to be released.
In any case, whether the Templars were warned in advance or whether
they deduced what was in the wind, certain precautions were definitely
taken. '5
In the first place the knights who were captured seem to have submitted passively, as if
under instructions to do so. At no point is there any record of the Order in France actively
resisting the king's seneschals.
In the second place there is persuasive evidence of some sort of
organised flight by a particular group of knights virtually all of whom
were in some way connected with the Order's Treasurer. It is not
perhaps surprising, therefore, that the treasure of the Temple,
together with almost all its documents and records, should have
disappeared. Persistent but unsubstantiated rumours speak of the
treasure being smuggled by night from the Paris preceptory, shortly
before the arrests. According to these rumours, it was transported by
wagons to the coast presumably to the
Order's naval base at La Rochelle and loaded into eighteen galleys, which were never
heard of again. Whether this is true or not, it would seem that the Templars' fleet escaped
the king's clutches because there is no report of any of the Order's ships being taken. On
the contrary, those ships appear to have vanished totally, along with whatever they might
have been carrying."
In France the arrested Templars were tried and many subjected to torture.
Strange confessions were extracted and even stranger accusations made.
63
Grim rumours began to circulate about the country. The Templars
supposedly worshipped a devil called Baphomet. At their secret ceremonies they
supposedly prostrated themselves before a bearded male head, which spoke to them and
invested them with occult powers. Unauthorised witnesses of these ceremonies were
never seen again. And there were other charges as well, which were even more vague: of
infanticide; of teaching women how to abort; of obscene kisses at the induction of
postulants; of homosexuality. But of all the charges levelled against these soldiers of
Christ, who had fought and laid down their lives for Christ, one stands out as most bizarre
and seemingly improbable. They were accused of ritually denying Christ, of repudiating,
trampling and spitting on the cross.
In France, at least, the fate of the arrested Templars was effectively sealed. Philippe
harried them savagely and mercilessly. Many were burned, many more imprisoned and
tortured. At the same time the king continued to bully the pope, demanding ever more
stringent measures against the Order.
After resisting for a time, the pope gave way in 1312, and the
Knights
Templar were officially dissolved without a conclusive verdict of guilt or innocence ever
being pronounced. But in Philippe's domains, the trials, inquiries and investigations
continued for another two years.
At last, in
March 1314, Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master, and Geoffroi de
Charnay,
Preceptor of Normandy, were roasted to death over a slow fire. With their execution, the
Templars ostensibly vanish from the stage of history.
Nevertheless, the Order did not cease to exist. Given the number of knights who
escaped, who remained at large or who were acquitted, it would be surprising if it had.
Philippe had tried to influence his fellow monarchs, hoping thereby to ensure that no
Templar, anywhere in Christendom, should be spared.
Indeed, the king's zeal in this respect is almost suspicious. One can
perhaps understand him wanting to rid his own domains of the Order's
presence. It is rather less clear why he should have been so intent on
exterminating
Templars elsewhere. Certainly he himself was no model of virtue; and
it is difficult to imagine a monarch who arranged for the deaths of two
64
popes being genuinely distressed by infringements of faith. Did
Philippe simply fear vengeance if the Order remained intact outside France? Or was there
something else involved?
In any case, his attempt to eliminate Templars outside France was not
altogether successful. Philippe's own sonin-law, for example, Edward
II of
England, at first rallied to the Order's defence. Eventually,
pressured by both the pope and the French king, he complied with their
demands, but only partially and tepidly. Although most Templars in
England seem to have escaped completely, a number were arrested. Of
these, however, most received only light sentences sometimes no more
than a few years' penance in abbeys and monasteries, where they lived
in generally comfortable conditions. Their lands were eventually
consigned to the Knights
Hospitaller of Saint John, but they themselves were spared the vicious persecution visited
upon their brethren in France.
Elsewhere the elimination of the Templars met with even greater difficulty.
Scotland, for instance, was at war with England at the time, and the consequent chaos left
little opportunity for implementing legal niceties.
Thus the Papal Bulls dissolving the Order were never proclaimed in Scotland and in
Scotland, therefore, the Order was never technically dissolved.
Many English and, it would appear, French Templars found a Scottish
refuge, and a sizeable contingent is said to have fought at Robert
Bruce's side at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. According to legend
coherent body in
Scotland for another four centuries. In the fighting of 1 688-91 , James
II of England was deposed by William of Orange. In Scotland supporters
of the beleaguered Stuart monarch rose in revolt and, at the Battle
of
Killiecrankie in 1689, John Claverhouse, Viscount of Dundee, was killed on the field.
When his body was recovered, he was reportedly found to be wearing the Grand Cross of
the Order of the Temple -not a recent device supposedly, but one dating from before
1307."
In Lorraine, which was part of Germany at the time, not part of France,
the
Templars were supported by the duke of the principality. A few were
tried and exonerated. Most, it seems, obeyed their Preceptor, who
reputedly advised them to shave their beards, don secular garb and
65
assimilate themselves into the local populace.
In Germany proper the Templars openly defied their judges, threatening to take up arms.
Intimidated, their judges pronounced them innocent; and when the Order was officially
dissolved, many German Templars found a haven in the Hospitallers of Saint John and in
the Teutonic Order. In Spain, too, the Templars resisted their persecutors and found a
refuge in other orders.
In Portugal the Order was cleared by an inquiry and simply modified its
name, becoming Knights of Christ. Under this title they functioned
well into the sixteenth century, devoting themselves to maritime
activity. Vasco da Gama was a Knight of Christ, and Prince Henry the
Navigator was a Grand
Master of the Order. Ships of the Knights of Christ sailed under the
familiar red pat tee cross. And it was under the same cross that
Christopher
Columbus's three caravels crossed the Atlantic to the New World. Columbus himself was
married to the daughter of a former Knight of Christ, and had access to his father-inlaw's
charts and diaries.
Thus, in a number of diverse ways, the Templars survived the attack
of
October 13th, 1307. And in 1522 the Templars' Prussian progeny, the
Teutonic Knights, seculari sed themselves, repudiated their allegiance
to
Rome and threw their support behind an upstart rebel and heretic
named
Martin Luther. Two centuries after their dissolution, the Templars, however vicariously,
were exacting revenge on the Church which had betrayed them.
Knights Templar The Mysteries
In greatly abridged form, this is the history of the Knights Templar as
writers have accepted and presented it, and as we encountered it in our
research. But we quickly discovered that there was another dimension
to the Order's history, considerably more elusive, more provocative and
more speculative. Even during their existence, a mystique had come to
surround the knights. Some said they were sorcerers and magicians,
secret adepts and alchemists. Many of their contemporaries shunned
them, believing them to be in league with unclean powers. As early as
66
1208, at the beginning of the Albigensian Crusade, Pope Innocent III
had admonished "the Templars for un-Christian behaviour, and referred explicitly to
necromancy. On the other hand, there were individuals who praised them with
extravagant enthusiasm.
In the late twelfth century Wolfram von Eschenbach, greatest of
medieval
Minnesanger or romanciers, paid a special visit to Outremer, to witness
the
Order in action. And when, between 1 195 and 1220, Wolfram composed his
epic romance Parzival, he conferred on the Templars a most exalted
status. In
Wolfram's poem the knights who guard the Holy Grail, the Grail castle
and the Grail family, are Templars. "e
After the Temple's demise, the mystique surrounding it persisted. The
final recorded act in the Order's history had been the burning of the
last Grand
Master, Jacques de Molay, in March 1314. As the smoke from the slow
fire choked the life from his body, Jacques de Molay is said to have
issued an imprecation from the flames. According to tradition, he
called his persecutors Pope Clement and King Philippe to join him and
account for themselves before the court of God within the year. Within
a month Pope
Clement was dead, supposedly from a sudden onslaught of dysentery. By the end of the
year Philippe was dead as well, from causes that remain obscure to this day. There is, of
course, no need to look for supernatural explanations. The Templars possessed great
expertise in the use of poisons.
And there were certainly enough people about refugee knights travelling incognito,
sympathisers of the Order or relatives of persecuted brethren to exact the appropriate
vengeance. Nevertheless, the apparent fulfilment of the Grand Master's curse lent
credence to belief in the Order's occult powers. Nor did the curse end there. According to
legend, it was to cast a pall over the French royal line far into the future. And thus echoes
of the Templars' supposed mystic power reverberated down the centuries.
By the eighteenth century various secret and semi secret
confraternities were lauding the Templars as both precursors and
mystical initiates. Many
Freemasons of the period appropriated the Templars as their own
antecedents. Certain Masonic "rites' or "observances' claimed direct
lineal descent from the Order, as well as authorised custody of its
67
arcane secrets. Some of these claims were patently preposterous.
Others resting, for example, on the
Order's possible survival in Scotland -may well have a core of validity, even if the
attendant trappings are spurious.
By 1789 the legends surrounding the Templars had attained positively mythic proportions,
and their historical reality was obscured by an aura of obfuscation and romance. They
were regarded as occult adepts, illumined alchemists, magi and sages, master masons
and high initiates veritable supermen endowed with an awesome arsenal of arcane power
and knowledge.
They were also regarded as heroes and martyrs, harbingers of the anticlerical spirit of the
age; and many French Freemasons, in conspiring against Louis XVI, felt they were
helping to implement Jacques de Molay's dying curse on the French line. When the king's
head fell beneath the guillotine, an unknown man is reported to have leaped on to the
scaffold.
He dipped his hand in the monarch's blood, flung it out over the surrounding throng and
cried, "Jacques de Molay, thou art avenged!"
Since the French Revolution the aura surrounding the Templars has not
diminished. At least three contemporary organisations today call
themselves
Templars, claiming to possess a pedigree from 1314 and charters whose authenticity has
never been established. Certain Masonic lodges have adopted the grade of "Templar', as
well as rituals and appellations supposedly descended from the original Order. Towards
the end of the nineteenth century, a sinister "Order of the New Templars' was established
in Germany and Austria, employing the swastika as one of its emblems.
Figures like H. P. Blavatsky, founder of Theosophy, and Rudolf Steiner,
founder of Anthroposophy, spoke of an esoteric 'wisdom tradition'
running back through the Rosicrucians to the Cathars and Templars who
were purportedly repositories of more ancient secrets still. In the
United
States teenage boys are admitted into the De Molay Society, without
either they or their mentors having much notion whence the name
derives. In
Britain, as well as elsewhere in the West, recondite rotary clubs
dignify themselves with the name "Templar' and include eminent public
figures. From the heavenly kingdom he sought to conquer with his
sword, Hugues de Payen must now look down with a certain wry
68
perplexity on the latter-day knights, balding, paunched and
bespectacled, that he engendered. And yet he must also be impressed by the durability
and vitality of his legacy.
In France this legacy is particularly powerful. Indeed, the Templars
are a veritable industry in France, as much as Glastonbury, ley-lines
or the Loch
Ness Monster are in Britain. In Paris book shops are filled with histories and accounts of
the Order some valid, some plunging enthusiastically into lunacy. During the last quarter-
century or so a number of extravagant claims have been advanced on behalf of the
Templars, some of which may not be wholly without foundation. Certain writers have
credited them, at least in large part, with the building of the Gothic cathedrals or at least
with providing an impetus of some sort to that burst of architectural energy and genius.
Other writers have argued that the Order established commercial contact with the
Americas as early as 1269, and derived much of its wealth from imported Mexican silver.
It has frequently been asserted that the Templars were privy to some sort of secret
concerning the origins of Christianity. It has been said that they were Gnostic, that they
were heretical, that they were defectors to Islam. It has been declared that they sought a
creative unity between bloods, races and religions a systematic policy of fusion between
Islamic, Christian and Judaic thought.
And again and again it is maintained, as Wolfram von Eschenbach
maintained nearly eight centuries ago, that the Templars were guardians
of the Holy
Grail, whatever the Holy Grail might be.
The claims are often ridiculous. At the same time there are unquestionably mysteries
associated with' the Templars and, we became convinced, secrets of some kind as well.
It was clear that some of these secrets pertained to what is now called 'esoterica'.
Symbolic carvings in Templar preceptories, for instance, suggest that some officials in the
Order's hierarchy were conversant with such disciplines as astrology, alchemy, sacred
geometry and numerology, as well, of course, as astronomy which, in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, was inseparable from astrology, and every bit as 'esoteric'.
But it was neither the extravagant claims nor the esoteric residues
69
that intrigued us. On the contrary, we found ourselves fascinated by
something much more mundane, much more prosaic the welter of
contradictions, improbabilities, inconsistencies and apparent
"smoke-screens' in the accepted history. Esoteric secrets the
Templars may well have had. But something else about them was being concealed as
well something rooted in the religious and political currents of their epoch. It was on this
level that we undertook most of our investigation.
We began with the end of the story, the fall of the Order and the charges levelled against
it. Many books have been written exploring and evaluating the possible truth of these
charges; and from the evidence we, like most researchers, concluded there seems to
have been some basis for them.
Subjected to interrogation by the Inquisition, for example, a number of knights referred to
something called "Baphomet' too many, and in too many different places, for Baphomet to
be the invention of a single individual or even a single preceptory. At the same time, there
is no indication of who or what Baphomet might have been, what he or it represented, why
he or it should have had any special significance. It would appear that Baphomet was
regarded with reverence, a reverence perhaps tantamount to idolatry. In some instances
the name is associated with the gargoyle-like, demonic sculptures found in various
preceptories. On other occasions Baphomet seems to be associated with an apparition of
a bearded head. Despite the claims of certain older historians, it seems clear that
Baphomet was not a corruption of the name Muhammad. On the other hand, it might
have been a corruption of the Arabic abufihamet, pronounced in Moorish Spanish as
bufihimat.
This means "Father of Understanding' or "Father of Wisdom', and
'father' in Arabic is also taken to imply 'source'. If this is
indeed the origin of Baphomet, it would therefore refer presumably to
some supernatural or divine principle. But what might have
differentiated
Baphomet from any other supernatural or divine principle remains unclear.
If Baphomet was simply God or Allah, why did the Templars bother to
re-christen Him? And if Baphomet was not God or Allah, who or what was
he?
In any case, we found indisputable evidence for the charge of secret ceremonies involving
a head of some kind.
70
Indeed the existence of such a head proved to be one of the dominant
themes running through the Inquisition records. As with Baphomet, however, the
significance of the head remains obscure. It may perhaps pertain to alchemy.
In the alchemical process there was a phase called the "Caput Mortuum'
or "Dead Head' the "Nigredo' or "Blackening' which was said to occur
before the precipitation of the Philosopher's Stone. According to
other accounts, however, the head was that of Hugues de Payen, the
Order's founder and first
Grand Master; and it is suggestive that Hugues's shield consisted of three black heads on
a gold field.
The head may also be connected with the famous Turin Shroud, which
seems to have been in the possession of the Templars between 1204 and
1307, and which, if folded, would have appeared as nothing more than a
head. Indeed, at the Templar preceptory of Templecombe in Somerset a
reproduction of a head was found which bears a striking resemblance to
that on the Turin
Shroud. At the same time recent speculation had linked the head, at
least tentatively, with the severed head of John the Baptist; and
certain writers have suggested that the Templars were "infected' with
the johannite or
Mandaean heresy which denounced Jesus as a 'false prophet' and acknowledged John
as the true Messiah. In the course of their activities in the Middle East the Templars
undoubtedly established contact with johannite sects, and the possibility of Johannite
tendencies in the Order is not altogether unlikely. But one cannot say that such
tendencies obtained for the Order as a whole, nor that they were a matter of official policy.
During the interrogations following the arrests in 1307, a head also figured in two other
connections. According to the Inquisition records, among the confiscated goods of the
Paris preceptory a reliquary in the shape of a woman's head was found. It was hinged on
top, and contained what appeared to have been relics of a peculiar kind. It is described as
follows:
a great head of gilded silver, most beautiful, and constituting the
image of a woman. Inside were two head bones wrapped in a cloth of
white linen, with another red cloth around it. A label was attached,
71
on which was written the legend CAPUT LVIIIm. The bones inside were
those of a rather small woman. z
A curious relic especially for a rigidly monastic, military institution
like the Templars. Yet a knight under interrogation, when confronted
with this feminine head, declared it had no relation to the bearded
male head used in the Order's rituals. Caput LVIIIm -"Head 58m'
remains a baffling enigma. But it is worth noting that the 'm' may not
be an 'm' at all, but U, the astrological symbol for Virgo .z'
The head figures again in another mysterious story traditionally linked with the Templars.
It is worth quoting in one of its several variants:
A great lady of Maraclea was loved by a Templar, a Lord of Sidon; but
she died in her youth, and on the night of her burial, this wicked
lover crept to the grave, dug up her body and violated it. Then a
voice from the void bade him return in nine months time for he would
find a son. He obeyed the injunction and at the appointed time he
opened the grave again and found a head on the leg bones of the
skeleton (skull and crossbones). The same voice bade him' guard it
well, for it would be the giver of all good things', and so he carried
it away with him. It became his protecting genius, and he was able to
defeat his enemies by merely showing them the magic head. In due
course, it passed into the possession of the Order .z2
This grisly narrative can be traced at least as far back as one Walter
Map, writing in the late twelfth century. But neither he nor another
writer, who recounts the same tale nearly a century later, specifies
that the necrophiliac rapist was a Templar. Z3 Nevertheless, by 1307 the
story had become closely associated with the Order. It is mentioned
repeatedly in the
Inquisition's records, and at least two knights under interrogation confessed their
familiarity with it. In subsequent accounts, like the one quoted above, the rapist himself is
identified as a Templar, and he remains so in the versions preserved by Freemasonry -
which adopted the skull and crossbones, and often employed it as a device on
tombstones.
In part the tale might almost seem to be a grotesque travesty of the
72
Immaculate Conception. In part it would seem to be a garbled symbolic
account of some initiation rite, some ritual involving a figurative
death and resurrection. One chronicler cites the name of the woman in
the story Yse, which would seem quite clearly to derive from Isis. And
certainly the tale evokes echoes of the mysteries associated with Isis,
as well as those of Tammuz or Adonis, whose head was flung into the
sea, and of Orpheus, whose head was flung into the river of the Milky
Way. The magical properties of the head also evoke the head of Bran
the
Blessed in Celtic mythology and in the Mabinogion. And it is Bran's mystical cauldron that
numerous writers have sought to identify as the pagan precursor of the Holy Grail.
Whatever significance might be ascribed to the 'cult of the head',
the
Inquisition clearly believed it to be important. In a list of charges drawn up on August 12th,
1308, there is the following:
Item, that in each province they had idols, namely heads... Item, that they adored these
idols .. .
Item, that they said that the head could save them. Item, that lit
could] make riches .. . Item, that it made the trees flower. Item,
that it made the land germinate. Item, that they surrounded or touched
each head of the aforesaid idols with small cords, which they wore
around themselves next to the shirt or the flesh .24
The cord mentioned in the last item is reminiscent of the Cathars, who were also alleged
to have worn a sacred cord of some kind. But most striking in the list is the head's
purported capacity to engender riches, make trees flower and bring fertility to the land.
These properties coincide remarkably with those ascribed in the romances to the Holy
Grail.
Of all the charges levelled against the Templars, the most serious were those of
blasphemy and heresy of denying, trampling and spitting on the cross. It is not clear
precisely what this alleged ritual was intended to signify -what, in other words, the
Templars were actually repudiating. Were they repudiating Christ? Or were they simply
repudiating the Crucifixion?
And whatever they repudiated, what exactly did they extol in its stead?
73
No one has satisfactorily answered these questions, but it seems clear
that a repudiation of some sort did occur, and was an integral
principle of the
Order. One knight, for example, testified that on his induction into
the
Order he was told, "You believe wrongly, because he [Christ] is indeed
a false prophet. Believe only in God in heaven, and not in him."zs
Another
Templar declared that he was told, "Do not believe that the man Jesus
whom the Jews crucified in Outremer is God and that he can save you."zs
A third knight similarly claimed he was instructed not to believe in
Christ, a false prophet, but only in a "higher God'. He was then shown
a crucifix and told,
"Set not much faith in this, for it is too young."
Such accounts are frequent and consistent enough to lend credence to
the charge. They are also relatively bland; and if the Inquisition
desired to concoct evidence, it could have devised something far more
dramatic, more incriminating, more damning. There thus seems little
doubt that the
Templars' attitude towards Jesus did not concur with that of Catholic orthodoxy, but it is
uncertain precisely what the Order's attitude was.
In any case, there is evidence that the ritual ascribed to the Templars
-trampling and spitting on the cross was in the air at least half a century
before 1307. Its context is confusing, but it is mentioned in connection with the
Sixth Crusade, which occurred in 1249.28
Knights Templar The Hidden Side
If the end of the Knights Templar was fraught with baffling enigmas,
the foundation and early history of the Order seemed to us to be even
more so. We were already plagued by a number of inconsistencies and
improbabilities. Nine knights, nine "poor' knights, appeared as if
from nowhere and among all the other crusaders swarming about the Holy
Land promptly had the king's quarters turned over to them! Nine "poor'
knights without admit ting any new recruits to their ranks presumed,
all by themselves, to defend the highways of Palestine. And there was
no record at all of them actually doing any thing, not even from Fulk
de Chartres, the king's official chronicler, who must surely have known
74
about Map 5Jerusalem the Temple and the Area of Mount Sion in the
Mid-Twelfth
Century
BRh'ACHOFIf199
I EPER HOSPII'AI-
Chorch4ih'HolyS~lchr~ FHE TEMPI .F
,i, o m "~4 C
S, Man of,h, Lame._
S'Mary heGr S, Man d ih, F.<l'm~n
l~ Bhp Moun~ 1 1 Ulno god Bwhun
Sl( INGA'II'F.
AHE'AOWNLD Ny'
F Ht: l't)hFPLARS
NOTE DAME Dt: SION (C-le and Tomb ~"l D-id)
"loBahleham
75
them! How, we wondered, could their activities, their move into the
royal premises, for instance, have escaped Fulk's notice? It would seem incredible, yet
the chronicler says nothing. No one says anything, in fact, until Guillaume de Tyre, a
good half century later. What could we conclude from this? That the knights were not
engaged in the laudable public service ascribed to them? That they were perhaps
involved instead in some more clandestine activity, of which not even the official chronicler
was aware?
Or that the chronicler himself was muzzled? The latter would seem to be the most likely
explanation. For the knights were soon joined by two most illustrious noblemen,
noblemen whose presence could not have gone unnoticed.
According to Guillaume de Tyre, the Order of the Temple was established
in 1118, originally numbered nine knights and admitted no new recruits
for nine years. It is clearly on record, however, that the count of
Anjou -father of Geoffrey Plantagenet joined the Order in 1120, only
two years after its supposed foundation. And in 1 124 the count of
Champagne, one of the wealthiest lords in Europe, did likewise. If
Guillaume de Tyre is correct, there should have been no new members
until 1127; but by 11 26 the
Templars had in fact admitted four new members to their ranks." Is
Guillaume wrong, then, in saying that no new members were admitted for
nine years? Or is he perhaps correct in that assertion, but wrong in
the date he attributes to the Order's foundation? If the count of
Anjou became a
Templar in 1 1 20, and if the Order admitted no new members for nine years after its
foundation, its foundation would date not from 1118, but at the latest, from 1111 or 1 1 1 2.
Indeed there is very persuasive evidence for this conclusion. In 1 1 14 the count of
Champagne was preparing for a journey to the Holy Land.
Shortly before his departure, he received a letter from the bishop of
Chartres. At one point, the bishop wrote, "We have heard that .. .
before leaving for
Jerusalem you made a vow to join "la mi lice du Christ", that you wish
to enrol in this evangelical soldiery. '3 "La mi lice du Christ' was
the name by which the Templars were originally known, and the name by
which Saint
Bernard alludes to them. In the context of the bishop's letter the
76
appellation cannot possibly refer to any other institution. It cannot
mean, for example, that the count of Champagne simply decided to become a crusader,
because the bishop goes on to speak of a vow of chastity which his decision has entailed.
Such a vow would hardly have been required of an ordinary crusader. From the bishop of
Chartres's letter, then, it is clear that the Templars already existed, or had at least been
planned, as early as 1114, four years before the date generally accepted; and that as
early as 1 1 14, the count of Champagne was already intending to join their ranks -which he
eventually did a decade later. One historian who noted this letter drew the rather curious
conclusion that the bishop cannot have meant what he said." He could not have meant to
refer to the Templars, the historian in question argues, because the Templars were not
founded until four years later in 1 1 18. Or perhaps the bishop did not know the year of Our
Lord in which he was writing? But the bishop died in 1115. How, in 1114, could he
'mistakenly' refer to something which did not yet exist?
There is only one possible, and very obvious, answer to the question that it is not the
bishop who is wrong, but Guillaume de Tyre, as well as all subsequent historians who
insist on regarding Guillaume as the unimpeachable voice of authority.
In itself an earlier foundation date for the Order of the Temple need
not necessarily be suspicious. But there are other circumstances and
singular coincidences which decidedly are. At least three of the nine
founding knights, including Hugues de Payen, seem to have come from
adjacent regions, to have had family ties, to have known each other
previously and to have been vassals of the same lord. This lord was
the count of
Champagne, to whom the bishop of Chartres addressed his letter in 1114 and who
became a Templar in 1 1 24, pledging obedience to his own vassal! In 1 1 1 5 the count of
Champagne donated the land on which Saint Bernard, patron of the Templars, built the
famous Abbey of Clairvaux; and one of the nine founding knights, Andre de Montbard,
was Saint Bernard's uncle.
In Troyes, moreover, the court of the count of Champagne, an
influential school of Cabalistic and esoteric studies had flourished
since 1 070. "2 At the Council of Troyes in 1 1 28 the Templars were
77
officially incorporated. For the next two centuries Troyes remained a
strategic centre for the Order; and even today there is a wooded
expanse adjacent to the city called the Foret du Temple. And it was
from Troyes, court of the count of
Champagne, that one of the earliest Grail romances issued quite possibly the earliest,
composed by Chretien de Troyes.
Amid this welter of data, we could begin to see a tenuous web of
connections a pattern that seemed more than mere coincidence. If such
a pattern did exist, it would certainly support our suspicion that
the
Templars were involved in some clandestine activity. Nevertheless, we
could only speculate as to what that activity might have been. One
basis for our speculation was the specific site of the knights'
domicile the wing of the royal palace, the Temple Mount, so
inexplicably conferred upon them. In
A.D. 70 the Temple which then stood there was sacked by Roman legions
under
Titus. Its treasure was plundered and brought to Rome, then plundered again and
perhaps brought to the Pyrenees. But what if there were something else in the Temple as
well something even more important than the treasure pillaged by the Romans? It is
certainly possible that the Temple's priests, confronted by an advancing phalanx of
centurions, would have left to the looters the booty they expected to find. And if there
were something else, it might well be concealed somewhere near by. Beneath the
Temple, for instance.
Among the Dead Sea Scrolls found at QumrAan, there is one now known as
the "Copper Scroll'. This scroll, deciphered at Manchester University
in 1955-6, makes explicit references to great quantities of bullion,
sacred vessels, additional unspecified material and 'treasure' of an
indeterminate kind. It cites twenty-four different hoards buried
beneath the Temple itself .33
In the mid-twelfth century a pilgrim to the Holy Land, one Johann von
Wurzburg, wrote of a visit to the so-called "Stables of Solomon'. These stables, situated
directly beneath the Temple itself, are still visible.
They were large enough, Johann reported, to hold two thousand horses; and it was in
these stables that the Templars quartered their mounts.
According to at least one other historian, the Templars were using
these stables for their horses as early as 1 124, when they still
78
supposedly numbered only nine. It would thus seem likely that the
fledgling Order, almost immediately after its inception, undertook excavations beneath the
Temple.
Such excavations might well imply that the knights were actively
looking for something. It might even imply that they were deliberately
sent to the
Holy Land, with the express commission of finding something. If this supposition is valid,
it would explain a number of anomalies -their installation in the royal palace, for example,
and the silence of the chronicler. But if they were sent to Palestine, who sent them?
In 1 104 the count of Champagne had met in conclave with certain
high-ranking nobles, at least one of whom had just returned from
Jerusalem." Among those present at this conclave were representatives of certain
families r. Brienne, Joinville and Chaumont who, we later discovered, figured significantly
in our story. Also present was the liege lord of Andre de Montbard, Andre being one of
the co-founders of the Temple and Saint Bernard's uncle.
Shortly after the conclave, the count of Champagne departed for the
Holy
Land himself and remained there for four years, returning in 1 1 08.35 In
1 1 14 he made a second journey to Palestine, intending to join the mi
lice du Christ', then changing his mind and returning to Europe a year
later. On his return, he immediately donated a tract of land to the
Cistercian Order, whose pre-eminent spokesman was Saint Bernard. On
this tract of land Saint
Bernard built the Abbey of Clairvaux, where he established his own residence and then
consolidated the Cistercian Order.
Prior to 1 1 12 the Cistercians were dangerously close to bankruptcy. Then, under Saint
Bernard's guidance, they underwent a dazzling change of fortune. Within the next few
years half a dozen abbeys were established. By 1 1 53 there were more than three
hundred, of which Saint Bernard himself personally founded sixty-nine. This extraordinary
growth directly parallels that of the Order of the Temple, which was expanding in the same
way during the same years. And, as we have said, one of the co founders of the Order of
the Temple was Saint Bernard's uncle, Andre de Montbard.
79
It is worth reviewing this complicated sequence of events. In 1 1 04
the count of Champagne departed for the Holy Land after meeting with
certain nobles, one of whom was connected with Andre de
Montbard. In 1112 Andre de Montbard's nephew, Saint Bernard, joined
the
Cistercian Order. In 1 1 14 the count of Champagne departed on a second
journey to the Holy Land, intending to join the Order of the Temple
which was co-founded by his own vassal together with Andre de Montbard,
and which, as the bishop of Chartres's letter attests, was already in
existence or in process of being established. In 1 1 1 5 the count of
Champagne returned to
Europe, having been gone for less than a year, and donated land for
the
Abbey of Clairvaux whose abbot was Andre de Montbard's nephew. In the
years that followed both the Cistercians and the Templars both Saint
Bernard's order and Andre de Montbard's became immensely wealthy and enjoyed
phases of phenomenal growth.
As we pondered this sequence of events, we became increasingly convinced that there
was some pattern underlying and governing such an intricate web.
It certainly did not appear to be random, nor wholly coincidental. On the contrary we
seemed to be dealing with the vestiges of some complex and ambitious overall design, the
full details of which had been lost to history. In order to reconstruct these details, we
developed a tentative hypothesis a "scenario', so to speak, which might accommodate the
known facts.
We supposed that something was discovered in the Holy Land, either by accident or
design something of immense import, which aroused the interest of some of Europe's
most influential noblemen. We further supposed that this discovery involved, directly or
indirectly, a great deal of potential wealth as well, perhaps, as something else, something
that had to be kept secret, something which could only be divulged to a small number of
high-ranking lords. Finally, we supposed that this discovery was reported and discussed
at the conclave of 1 1 04.
Immediately thereafter the count of Champagne departed for the Holy
Land himself, perhaps to verify personally what he had heard, perhaps
to implement some course of action the foundation, for example, of what
subsequently became the Order of the Temple. In 1 1 14, if not before,
the
80
Templars were established with the count of Champagne playing some
crucial role, perhaps acting as guiding spirit and sponsor. By 1 1 15
money was already flowing back to Europe and into the coffers of the
Cistercians, who, under Saint Bernard and from their new position of
strength, endorsed and imparted credibility to the fledgling
Order of the Temple.
Under Bernard the Cistercians attained a spiritual ascendancy in Europe.
Under Hugues de Payen and Andre de Montbard, the Templars attained a military and
administrative ascendancy in the Holy Land which quickly spread back to Europe. Behind
the growth of both orders loomed the shadowy presence of uncle and nephew, as well as
the wealth, influence and patronage of the count of Champagne. These three individuals
constitute a vital link. They are like markers breaking the surface of history, indicating the
dim configurations of some elaborate, concealed design.
If such a design actually existed, it cannot, of course, be ascribed to
these three men alone. On the contrary, it must have entailed a great
deal of co-operation from certain other people and a great deal of
meticulous organisation. Organisation is perhaps the key word; for if
our hypothesis was correct, it would presuppose a degree of
organisation amounting to an order in itself a third and secret order
behind the known and documented
Orders of the Cistercians and the Temple. Evidence for the existence for such a third
order was not long in arriving.
In the meantime, we devoted our attention to the hypothetical "discovery' in the Holy Land
the speculative basis on which we had established our "scenario'. What might have been
found there? To what might the Templars, along with Saint Bernard and the count of
Champagne, have been privy? At the end of their history the Templars kept inviolate the
secret of their treasure's whereabouts and nature.
Not even documents survived. If the treasure in question were simply
financial bullion, for example it would not have been necessary to
destroy or conceal all records, all rules, all archives. The
implication is that the Templars had something else in their custody,
something so precious that not even torture would wring an intimation
of it from their lips. Wealth alone could not have prompted such
absolute and unanimous secrecy. Whatever it was had to do with other
81
matters, like the Order's attitude towards Jesus.
On October 13th, 1307, all Templars throughout France were arrested
by
Philippe le Bel's seneschals. But that statement is not quite true.
The
Templars of at least one preceptory slipped unscathed through the king's net the
preceptory of Bezu, adjacent to Rennes-leChateau. How and why did they escape? To
answer that question, we were compelled to investigate the Order's activities in the vicinity
of Bezu. Those activities proved to have been fairly extensive. Indeed, there were some
half dozen preceptories and other holdings in the area, which covered some twenty
square miles.
In 1 153 a nobleman of the region a nobleman with Cathar sympathies
became fourth Grand Master of the Order of the Temple. His name was
Bertrand de Blanchefort, and his ancestral home was situated on a mountain peak a few
miles away from both Bezu and Rennes-leChateau.
Bertrand de
Blanchefort, who presided over the Order from 1 153 until 1 170, was
probably the most significant of all Templar Grand Masters. Before his
regime the
Order's hierarchy and administrative structure were, at best, nebulous.
It was Bertrand who transformed the Knights Templar into the superbly
efficient, well-organised and magnificently disciplined hierarchical
institution they then became. It was Bertrand who launched their
involvement in high-level diplomacy and international politics. It
was
Bertrand who created for them a major sphere of interest in Europe, and
particularly in France. And according to the evidence that survives,
Bertrand's mentor some historians even list him as the Grand Master immediately
preceding Bertrand was Andre de Montbard.
Within a few years of the Templars' incorporation, Bertrand had not
only joined their ranks, but also conferred on them lands in the
environs of
Rennes-leChateau and Bezu. And in 1 156, under Bertrand's regime as
Grand
Master, the Order is said to have imported to the area a contingent
of
German-speaking miners. These workers were supposedly subjected to a
rigid, virtually military discipline. They were forbidden to
fraternise in any way with the local population and were kept strictly
segregated from the surrounding community. A special judicial body,
'la Judicature des
82
Allemands', was even created to deal with legal technicalities
pertaining to them. And their alleged task was to work the gold mines
on the slopes of the mountain at
Blanchefort gold mines which had been utterly exhausted by the Romans
nearly a thousand years before. -1s
During the seventeenth century engineers were commissioned to investigate the
mineralogical prospects of the area and draw up detailed reports. In the course of his
report one of them, Cesar d'Arcons, discussed the ruins he had found, remains of the
German workers' activity. On the basis of his research, he declared that the German
workers did not seem to have been engaged in mining. 3' In what, then, were they
engaged? Cesar d'Arcons was unsure smelting perhaps, melting something down,
constructing something out of metal, perhaps even excavating a subterranean crypt of
some sort and creating a species of depository.
Whatever the answer to this enigma, there had been a Templar presence in the vicinity of
Rennes-leChateau since at least the mid-twelfth century.
By 1285 there was a major preceptory a few miles from Bezu, at
Campagnesur-Aude. Yet near the end of the thirteenth century, Pierre
de Voisins, lord of Bezu and Rennes-leChateau, invited a separate
detachment of
Templars to the area, a special detachment from the Aragonese province
of
Roussillon.38 This fresh detachment established itself on the summit of the mountain of
Bezu, erecting a lookout post and a chapel.
Ostensibly, the
Roussillon Templars had been invited to Bezu to maintain the security
of the region and protect the pilgrim route which ran through the
valley to
Santiago de Compastela in Spain. But it is unclear why these extra knights should have
been required. In the first place they cannot have been very numerous not enough to
make a significant difference. In the second place there were already Templars in the
neighbourhood.
Finally, Pierre de
Voisins had troops of his own, who, together with the Templars already
there, could guarantee the safety of the environs. Why, then, did
the
Roussillon Templars come to Bezu? According to local tradition, they came to spy. And
to exploit or bury or guard a treasure of some sort.
Whatever their mysterious mission, they obviously enjoyed some kind of
special immunity. Alone of all Templars in France, they were left
83
unmolested by Philippe le Bel's seneschals on October 13th, 1307. On
that fateful day the commander of the Templar contingent at Bezu was a
Seigneur de Goth .39 And before taking the name of Pope Clement V, the
archbishop of Bordeaux King
Philippe's vacillating pawn was Bertrand de Goth. Moreover, the new
pontiff's mother was Ida de Blanchefort, of the same family as Bertrand
de
Blanchefort. Was the pope then privy to some secret entrusted to the
custody of his family a secret which remained in the Blanchefort family
until the eighteenth century, when the Abbe Antoine Bigou, cure of
Rennes-leChateau and confessor to Marie de Blanchefort, composed the
parchments found by
Sauniere? If this were the case, the pope might well have extended some sort of
immunity to his relative commanding the Templars at Bezu.
The history of the Templars near Rennes-leChateau was clearly as fraught with perplexing
enigmas as the history of the Order in general. Indeed, there were a number of factors
the role of Bertrand de Blanchefort, for example which seemed to constitute a discernible
link between the general and the more localised enigmas.
In the meantime, however, we were confronted with a daunting array of coincidences
coincidences too numerous to be truly coincidental. Were we in fact dealing with a
calculated pattern? If so, the obvious question was who devised it, for patterns of such
intricacy do not devise themselves.
All the evidence available to us pointed to meticulous planning and
careful organisation so much so that increasingly we suspected there
must be a specific group of individuals, perhaps comprising an order of
some sort, working assiduously behind the scenes. We did not have to
seek confirmation for the existence of such an order. The confirmation
84
thrust itself upon us. 4 Secret Documents
Confirmation of a third order an order behind both the Templars and
the
Cistercians thrust itself upon us. At first, however, we could not take it seriously. It
seemed to issue from too unreliable, too vague and nebulous a source. Until we could
authenticate the veracity of this source, we could not believe its claims.
In 1956 a series of hooks, articles, pamphlets and other documents
relating to Berenger Sauniere and the enigma of Rennes-leChateau began
to appear in
France. This material has steadily proliferated, and is now voluminous.
Indeed, it has come to constitute the basis for a veritable 'industry'. And its sheer quantity,
as well as the effort and resources involved in producing and disseminating it, implicitly
attest to something of immense but as yet unexplained import.
Not surprisingly, the affair has served to whet the appetites of numerous independent
researchers like ourselves, whose works have added to the corpus of material available.
The original material, however, seems to have issued from a single specific source.
Someone clearly has a vested interest in 'promoting' Rennes-leChateau, in drawing public
attention to the story, in generating publicity and further investigation. Whatever else it
might be, this vested interest does not appear to be financial. On the contrary, it would
appear to be more in the order of propaganda propaganda which establishes credibility for
something. And whoever the individuals responsible for this propaganda may be, they
have endeavoured to focus spotlights on certain issues while keeping themselves
scrupulously in the shadows.
Since 1956 a quantity of relevant material has been deliberately and systematically
'leaked', in a piecemeal fashion, fragment by fragment.
Most of these fragments purport to issue, implicitly or explicitly,
85
from some 'privileged' or "inside' source. Most contain additional
information, which supplements what was known before and thus contributes to the
overall jigsaw. Neither the import nor the meaning of the overall jigsaw has yet been
made clear, however. Instead, every new snippet of information has done more to
intensify than to dispel the mystery. The result has been an ever-proliferating network of
seductive allusions, provocative hints, suggestive cross-references and connections. In
confronting the welter of data now available, the reader may well feel he is being toyed
with, or being ingeniously and skilfully led from conclusion to conclusion by successive
carrots dangled before his nose. And underlying it all is the constant, pervasive intimation
of a secret a secret of monumental and explosive proportions.
The material disseminated since 1956 has taken a number of forms. Some
of it has appeared in popular, even best-selling books, more or less
sensational, more or less cryptically teasing. Thus, for example,
Gerard de
Sede has produced a sequence of works on such apparently divergent
topics as the Cathars, the Templars, the Merovingian dynasty, the
Rose-Croix,
Sauniere and Rennes-leChateau. In these works, M. de Sede is often arch, coy,
deliberately mystifying and coquettishly evasive. His tone implies constantly that he
knows more than he is saying perhaps a device for concealing that he does not know as
much as he pretends. But his books contain enough verifiable details to forge a link
between their respective themes. Whatever else one may think of M. de Sede, he
effectively establishes that the diverse subjects to which he addresses himself somehow
overlap and are interconnected.
On the other hand, we could not but suspect that M. de Sede's work drew
heavily on information provided by an informant and indeed, M. de Sede
more or less acknowledges as much himself. Quite by accident, we
learned who this informant was. In 1 971 , when we embarked on our first
BBC film on
Rennes-leChateau, we wrote to M. de Sede's Paris publisher for certain visual material.
The photographs we requested were accordingly posted to us. Each of them, on the
back, was stamped "Plantard'. At that time the name meant little enough to us. But the
appendix to one of M.
86
de Sede's books consisted of an interview with one Pierre Plantard.
And we subsequently obtained evidence that Pierre
Plantard had been involved with certain of M. de Sede's works.
Eventually
Pierre Plantard began to emerge as one of the dominant figures in our investigation.
The information disseminated since 1956 has not always been contained
in as popular and accessible a form as M. de Sede's. Some of it has
appeared in weighty, daunting, even pedantic tomes, diametrically
opposed to M. de
Sede's journalistic approach. One such work was produced by Rene
Descadeillas, former Director of the Municipal Library of Carcassonne.
M. Descadeillas's book is strenuously anti-sensational. Devoted to the
history of Rennes-leChateau and its environs, it contains a plethora of
social and economic minutiae for example, the births, deaths,
marriages" finances, taxes and public works between the years 1730 and
1820." On the whole, it could not possibly differ more from the
mass-market books of M. de Sede which M. Descadeillas elsewhere
subjects to scathing criticism. 2
In addition to published books, including some which have been published privately, there
have been a number of articles in newspapers and magazines. There have been
interviews with various individuals claiming to be conversant with one or another facet of
the mystery. But the most interesting rind important information has not, for the most part,
appeared in book form. Most of it has surfaced elsewhere in documents and pamphlets
not intended for general circulation. Many of these documents and pamphlets have been
deposited, in limited, privately printed editions, at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.
They seem to have been produced very cheaply. Some, in fact, are mere typewritten
pages, photo offset and reproduced on an office duplicator.
Even more than the marketed works, this body of ephemera seems to have
issued from the same source. By means of cryptic asides and footnotes
pertaining to Sauniere, Rennes-leChateau,
Poussin, the Merovingian dynasty and other themes, each piece of it
complements, enlarges on and confirms the others. In most cases the
ephemera is of uncertain authorship, appearing under a variety of
transparent, even 'cute' pseudonyms Madeleine Blancassal, for
example,
Nicolas Beaucean, Jean Delaude and Antoine 1"Ermite.
87
"Madeleine', of course, refers to Marie-Madeleine, the Magdalene, to
whom the church at Rennes-leChateau is dedicated and to whom Sauniere
consecrated his tower, the Tour Magdala. "Blancassal' is formed from
the names of two small rivers that converge near the village of
Rennes-les-Bains the Blanque and the Sals. "Beaucean' is a variation
of "Beauseanf, the official battle-cry and battle-standard of the
Knights Templar. "Jean
Delaude' is "Jean de 1"Aude' or "John of the Aude', the department in
which
Rennes-leChateau is situated. And "Antoine VErmite' is Saint Anthony
the
Hermit, whose statue adorns the church at Rennes-leChateau and whose feast day is
January 17th -the date on Marie de Blanchefort's tombstone and the date on which
Sauniere suffered his fatal stroke.
The work ascribed to Madeleine Blancassal is entitled Les Descendants
merovingiens et 1'enigme du Razes wisigoth ("The Merovingian
Descendants and the Enigma of the Visigoth Razes') Razes being the old
name for
Sauniere's region. According to its title page, this work was
originally published in German and translated into French by Walter
Celse-Nazaire another pseudonym compounded from Saints Celse and
Nazaire, to whom the church at Rennes-les-Bains is dedicated. And
according to the title page, the publisher of the work was the Grande
Loge Alpina, the supreme Masonic lodge of Switzerland -the Swiss
equivalent of Grand Lodge in Britain or
Grand Orient in France. There is no indication as to why a modern
Masonic lodge should display such interest in the mystery surrounding
an obscure nineteenth-century French priest and the history of his
parish a millennium and a half ago. One of our colleagues and an
independent researcher both questioned Alpina officials. They
disclaimed all knowledge not only of the work's publication, but also
of its existence. Yet an independent researcher claims personally to
have seen the work on the shelves of
Alpina's library. 3 And subsequently we discovered that the Alpina imprint appeared on two
other pamphlets as well.
Of all the privately published documents deposited in the
Bibliotheque
Nationale, the most important is a compilation of papers entitled
collectively Dossiers secrets ("Secret Dossiers'). Catalogued under
88
numberlm' 249, this compilation is now on microfiche. Until recently,
however, it comprised a thin, nondescript volume, a species of folder with stiff covers
which contained a loose assemblage of ostensibly unrelated items news clippings, letters
pasted to backing-sheets, pamphlets, numerous genealogical trees and the odd printed
page apparently extracted from the body of some other work. Periodically some of the
individual pages would be removed. At different times other pages would be freshly
inserted. On certain pages additions and corrections would sometimes be made in a
minuscule longhand. At a later date, these pages would be replaced by new ones, printed
and incorporating all previous emendations.
The bulk of the Dossiers, which consists of genealogical trees, is ascribed to one Henri
Lobineau, whose name appears on the title page.
Two additional items in the folder declare that Henri Lobineau is yet
another pseudonym derived perhaps from a street, the Rue Lobineau,
which runs outside Saint
Sulpice in Paris and that the genealogies are actually the work of a man named Leo
Schidlof, an Austrian historian and antiquarian who purportedly lived in Switzerland and
died in 1 966. On the basis of this information we undertook to learn what we could about
Leo Schidlof.
In 1978 we managed to locate Leo Schidlofs daughter, who was living
in
England. Her father, she said, was indeed Austrian. He was not a genealogist, historian
or antiquarian, however, but an expert and dealer in miniatures, who had written two
works on the subject. In 1948 he had settled in London, where he lived until his death in
Vienna in 1966 the year and place specified in the Dossiers secrets.
Miss Schidlof vehemently maintained that her father had never had any
interest in genealogies, the Merovingian dynasty, or mysterious
goings-on in the south of France. And yet, she continued, certain
people obviously believed he had. During the 1960s, for example, he
had received numerous letters and telephone calls from unidentified
individuals in both Europe and the United States, who wished to meet
with him and discuss matters of which he had no knowledge whatever. On
89
his death in 1966 there was another barrage of messages, most of them
inquiring about his papers.
Whatever the affair in which Miss Schidlofs father had become unwittingly embroiled, it
seemed to have struck a sensitive chord with the American government. In 1946 -a
decade before the Dossiers secrets are said to have been compiled Leo Schidlof applied
for a visa to enter the United States.
The application was refused, on grounds of suspected espionage or some
other form of clandestine activity. Eventually the matter seems to
have been sorted out, the visa issued and Leo Schidlof was admitted to
the
States. It may all have been a typical bureaucratic mix-up. But
Miss
Schidlof seemed to suspect that it was somehow connected with the arcane
preoccupations so perplexingly ascribed to her father.
Miss Schidlofs story gave us pause. The refusal of an American visa
might well have been more than coincidental, for there were, among the
papers in the Dossiers secrets, references that linked the name Leo
Schidlof with some sort of international espionage. In the meantime,
however, a new pamphlet had appeared in Paris which, during the months
that followed, was confirmed by other sources. According to this
pamphlet the elusive
Henri Lobineau was not Leo Schidlof after all, but a French aristocrat of distinguished
lineage, Comte Henri de Lenoncourt.
The question of Lobineau's real identity was not the only enigma
associated with the Dossiers secrets. There was also an item which
referred to "Leo
Schidlofs leather briefcase'. This briefcase supposedly contained a number of secret
papers relating to Rennes-leChateau between 1600 and 1800.
Shortly after Schidlofs death, the briefcase was said to have passed
into the hands of a courier, a certain Fakhar ul Islam who, in February
1967, was to rendezvous in East Germany with an 'agent delegated by
Geneva' and entrust it to him. Before the' transaction could be
effected, however,
Fakhar ul Islam was reportedly expelled from East Germany and returned
to
Paris "to await further orders'. On February 20th, 1967, his body was found on the railway
tracks at Melun, having been hurled from the Paris-Geneva express. The briefcase had
supposedly vanished.
We set out to check this lurid story as far as we could. A series of
90
articles in French newspapers of February 21st did confirm most of
it." A decapitated body had indeed been found on the tracks at Melun.
It was identified as that of a young Pakistani named Fakhar ul Islam. For reasons that
remained obscure, the dead man had been expelled from East Germany and was
travelling from Paris to Geneva engaged, it appeared, in some form of espionage.
According to the newspaper reports, the authorities suspected foul play, and the affair was
being investigated by the DST (Directory of Territorial Surveillance, or CounterEspionage).
On the other hand, the newspapers made no mention of Leo Schidlof, a
leather briefcase or anything else that might connect the occurrence
with the mystery of RennesleChateau. As a result, we found ourselves
confronted with a number of questions. On the one hand, it was
possible that Fakhar ul
Islam's death was linked with Rennes-leChateau that, the item in the
Dossiers secrets in fact drew upon "inside information' inaccessible to the newspapers.
On the other hand the item in the Dossiers secrets might have been deliberate and
spurious mystification. One need only find any unexplained or suspicious death and
ascribe it, after the fact, to one's own hobby-horse. But if this were indeed the case, what
was the purpose of the exercise? Why should someone deliberately try to create an
atmosphere of sinister intrigue around Rennes-leChateau? What might be gained by the
creation of such an atmosphere? And who might gain from it?
These questions perplexed us all the more because Fakhar ul Islam's death was not,
apparently, an isolated occurrence. Less than a month later another privately printed work
was deposited in the Bibliotheque Nationale.
It was called Le Serpent rouge ("The Red Serpent') and dated, symbolically and
significantly enough, January 17th. Its title page ascribed it to three authors Pierre
Feugere, Louis Saint-Maxent and Gaston de Koker.
Le Serpent rouge is a singular work. It contains one Merovingian genealogy and two
maps of France in Merovingian times, along with a cursory commentary. It also contains a
ground plan of Saint Sulpice in Paris, which delineates the chapels of the church's various
saints.
But the bulk of the text consists of thirteen short prose poems of
91
impressive literary quality many of them reminiscent of the work of
and each corresponds to a sign of the Zodiac a zodiac of thirteen
signs, with the thirteenth, Ophiuchus or the Serpent
Holder, inserted between Scorpio and Sagittarius.
Narrated in the first person, the thirteen prose poems are a type of
symbolic: or allegorical pilgrimage, commencing with Aquarius and
ending with Capricorn which, as the text explicitly states, presides
over
January 1 7th. In the otherwise cryptic text there are familiar
references -to the Blanchefort family, to the decorations in the church
at
Rennes-leChateau, to some of Sauniere's inscriptions there, to Poussin
and the painting of "Les Bergers d'Arcadie', to the motto on the tomb,
"Et in
Arcadia Ego'. At one point, there is mention of a red snake, "cited in
the parchments', uncoiling across the centuries an explicit allusion,
it would seem, to a bloodline or a lineage. And for the astrological
sign of
Leo, there is an enigmatic paragraph worth quoting in its entirety:
From she whom I desire to liberate, there wafts towards me the fragrance of the perfume
which impregnates the Sepulchre. Formerly, some named her:
Isis, queen of all sources benevolent. COME UNTO ME ALL YE WHO
SUFFER
AND
ARE AFFLICTED, AND I SHALL GIVE YE REST. To others, she is MAGDALENE, of the
celebrated vase filled with healing balm. The initiated know her true name: NOTRE
DAME DES CROSS."
The implications of this paragraph are extremely interesting. Isis, of
course, is the Egyptian Mother Goddess, patroness of mysteries the
"White
Queen' in her benevolent aspects, the "Black Queen' in her malevolent ones.
Numerous writers, on mythology, anthropology, psychology, theology,
have traced the cult of the Mother Goddess from pagan times to the
Christian epoch. And according to these writers she is said to have
survived under
Christianity in the guise of the Virgin Mary the "Queen of Heaven',
as
Saint Bernard called her, a designation applied in the Old Testament to
the
Mother Goddess Astarte, the Phoenician equivalent of Isis. But
according to the text in Le Serpent rouge, the Mother Goddess of
Christianity would not appear to be the Virgin. On the contrary, she
would appear to be the
92
Magdalene to whom the church at Rennes-leChateau is dedicated and to
whom Sauniere consecrated his tower. Moreover, the text would seem to
imply that "Notre
Dame' does not apply to the Virgin either. That resonant title
conferred on all the great cathedrals of France would also seem to
refer to the
Magdalene. But why should the Magdalene be revered as "Our Lady' and, still more, as a
Mother Goddess? Maternity is the last thing generally associated with the Magdalene. In
popular Christian tradition she is a prostitute who finds redemption by apprenticing herself
to Jesus. And she figures most noticeably in the Fourth Gospel, where she is the first
person to behold Jesus after the Resurrection. In consequence she is extolled as a saint,
especially in France where, according to medieval legends, she is said to have brought
the Holy Grail. And indeed the 'vase filled with healing balm' might well be intended to
suggest the Grail. But to enshrine the Magdalene in the place usually reserved for the
Virgin would seem, at very least, to be heretical.
Whatever their point, the authors of Le Serpent rouge -or, rather, the alleged authors met
with a fate as gruesome as that of Fakhar ul Islam.
On March 6th, 1967, Louis Saint-Maxent and Gaston de Koker were found hanged. And
the following day, March 7th, Pierre Feugere was found hanged as well.
One might immediately assume, of course, that these deaths were in some
way connected with the composition and public release of Le Serpent
rouge. As in the case of Fakhar ul Islam, however, we could not
discount an alternative explanation. If one wished to engender an aura
of sinister mystery, it would be easy enough to do. One need only comb
the newspapers until one found a suspicious death or, in this instance,
three suspicious deaths. After the fact, one might then append the
names of the deceased to a pamphlet of one's own concoction and deposit
that pamphlet in the
Bibliotheque Nationale with an earlier date (January 17th) on the title
page. It would be virtually impossible to expose such a hoax, which
would certainly produce the desired intimation of foul play. But why
perpetrate such a hoax at all? Why should someone want to invoke an
aura of violence, murder and intrigue? Such a ploy would hardly deter
93
investigators. On the contrary, it would only further attract them.
If, on the other hand, we were not dealing with a hoax, there were
still a number of baffling questions. Were we to believe, for example,
that the three hanged men were suicides or victims of murder? Suicide,
in the circumstances, would seem to make little sense And murder would
not seem to make much more. One could understand three people being
dispatched lest they divulge certain explosive information. But in
this case the information had already been divulged, already deposited
in the
Bibliotheque Nationale. Could the murders if that was what they were have been a form
of punishment, of retribution? Or perhaps a means of precluding any subsequent
indiscretions? Neither of these explanations is satisfactory. If one is angered by the
disclosure of certain information, or if one wishes to forestall additional disclosures, one
does not attract attention to the matter by committing a trio of lurid and sensational
murders unless one is reasonably confident that there will be no very assiduous inquiry.
Our own adventures in the course of our investigation were mercifully
less dramatic, but equally mystifying. In our research, for example,
we had encountered repeated references to a work by one Antoine
VErmite entitled
Un Tresor merovingien a Rennes-leChateau ("A Merovingian Treasure at
Rennes-leChateau'). We endeavoured to locate this work and quickly found it listed in the
Bibliotheque Nationale catalogue; but it proved inordinately difficult to obtain. Every day,
for a week, we went to the library and filled out the requisite fiche requesting the work. On
each occasion the fiche was returned marked "communique' indicating that the work was
being used by someone else. In itself this was not necessarily unusual.
After a fortnight, however, it began to become so and exasperating as well, for we could
not remain in Paris much longer. We sought the assistance of a librarian. He told us the
book would be 'communique' for three months -an extremely unusual situation and that
we could not order it in advance of its return.
In England not long afterwards a friend of ours announced that she was
going to Paris for a holiday. We accordingly asked her to try to
obtain the elusive work of Antoine TErmite and at least make a note of
94
what it contained. At the Bibliotheque Nationale, she requested the
book. Her fiche was not even returned. The next day she tried again, and with the same
result.
When we were next in Paris, some four months later, we made another attempt. Our fiche
was again returned marked "communique'. At this point, we began to feel the game had
been somewhat overplayed and began to play one of our own. We made our way down
the catalogue room, adjacent to the 'stacks' which are, of course, inaccessible to the
public. Finding an elderly and kindly looking library assistant, we assumed the role of
bumbling English tourists with Neanderthal command of French. Asking his help, we
explained that we were seeking a particular work but were unable to obtain it, no doubt
because of our imperfect understanding of the library's procedures.
The genial old gentleman agreed to help. We gave him the work's catalogue number and
he disappeared into the "stacks'. When he emerged, he apologised, saying there was
nothing he could do the book had been stolen. What was more, he added, a compatriot of
ours was apparently responsible for the theft an Englishwoman. After some badgering, he
consented to give us her name. It was that of our friend!
On returning to England again, we sought the assistance of the library service in London,
and they agreed to look into the bizarre affair. On our behalf, the National Central Library
wrote to the Bibliotheque Nationale requesting an explanation for what appeared to be
deliberate obstruction of legitimate research. No explanation was forthcoming. Shortly
thereafter, however, a Xerox copy of Antoine 1"Ermite's work was at last dispatched to us
-along with emphatic instructions that it be returned immediately. This in itself was
extremely singular, for libraries do not generally request return of Xerox copies. Such
copies are usually deemed mere waste paper and disposed of accordingly.
The work, when it was finally in our hands, proved distinctly disappointing hardly worth the
complicated business of obtaining; it.
Like Madeleine
Blancassal's work, it bore the imprint of the Swiss Grande Loge Alpina.
But it said nothing in any way new. Very briefly, it recapitulated the
history of the Comte of Razes, of RennesleChateau and Berenger
95
Sauniere. In short, it rehashed all the details with which we had
long been familiar. There seemed to be no imaginable reason why anyone
should have been using it, and keeping it "communique', for a solid
week. Nor did there seem any imaginable reason for withholding it from
us. But most puzzling of all, the work itself was not original. With
the exception of a few words altered here and there, it was a verbatim
text, reset and reprinted, of a chapter in a popular paperback a facile
best-seller, available at news-stands for a few francs, on lost
treasures throughout the world. Either Antoine 1 "Ermite had
shamelessly plagiarised the published book, or the published book had
plagiarised
Antoine 1 "Ermite.
Such occurrences are typical of the mystification that has attended the
material which, since 1956, has been appearing fragment by fragment
in
France. Other researchers have encountered similar enigmas. Ostensibly plausible
names have proved to be pseudonyms. Addresses, including addresses of publishing
houses and organisations, have proved not to exist. References have been cited to books
which no one, to our knowledge, has ever seen.
Documents have disappeared, been altered, or inexplicably mis catalogued in the
Bibilotheque Nationale. At times one is tempted to suspect a practical joke. If so,
however, it is a practical joke on an enormous scale, involving an impressive array of
resources financial and otherwise. And whoever might be perpetrating such a joke would
seem to be taking it very seriously indeed.
In the meantime new material has continued to appear, with the familiar
themes recurring like leitmotifs -Sauni6re, Rennes-leChateau, Poussin,
"Les Bergers d'Arcadie', the Knights Templar, Dagobert II and the
Merovingian dynasty. Allusions to viticulture the grafting of vines
figure prominently, presumably in some allegorical sense. At the same
time, more and more information has been added. The identification of
Henri
Lobineau as the count of Lenoncourt is one example. Another is an increasing but
unexplained insistence on the significance of the Magdalene.
And two other locations have been stressed repeatedly, assuming a
status now apparently commensurate with Rennes-leChateau. One of these
96
is Gisors, a fortress in Normandy which was of vital strategic and
political importance at the peak of the
Crusades. The other is Stenay, once called Satanicum, on the fringe of
the
Ardennes the old capital of the Merovingian dynasty, near which
Dagobert
II was assassinated in 679.
The corpus of material now available cannot be adequately reviewed or discussed in
these pages. It is too dense, too confusing, too disconnected, most of all too copious. But
from this ever-proliferating welter of information, certain key points emerge which
constitute a foundation for further research. They are presented as indisputable historical
fact, and can be summarised as follows: 1)
There was a secret order behind the Knights Templar, which created
the
Templars as its military and administrative arm. This order, which has
functioned under a variety of names, is most frequently known as the
Prieure de Sion ("Priory of Sion'). 2) The Prieure de Sion has been
directed by a sequence of Grand Masters whose names are among the most
illustrious in Western history and culture. 3) Although the Knights
Templar were destroyed and dissolved between 1307 and 1314, the Prieure
de Sion remained unscathed. Although itself periodically torn by
internecine and factional strife, it has continued to function through
the centuries. Acting in the shadows, behind the scenes, it has
orchestrated certain of the critical events in Western history. 4) The
Prieure de Sion exists today and is still operative. It is influential
and plays a role in high-level international affairs, as well as in the
domestic affairs of certain European countries. To some significant
extent it is responsible for the body of information disseminated since
1956. 5) The avowed and declared objective of the Prieure de Sion is
the restoration of the Merovingian dynasty and bloodline to the throne
not only of France, but to the thrones of other European nations as
well. 6) The restoration of the Merovingian dynasty is sanctioned and
justifiable, both legally and morally. Although deposed in the eighth
century, the Merovingian bloodline did not become extinct. On the
contrary it perpetuated itself in a direct line from Dagobert II and
his son,
97
Sigisbert IV. By dint of dynastic alliances and intermarriages, this
line came to include Godfroi de Bouillon, who captured Jerusalem in
1099, and various other noble and royal families, past and present
Blanchefort, Gisors,
Saint Clair (Sinclair in England), Montesquieu, Montpezat, Poher,
Luisignan,
Plantard and Habsburg-Lorraine. At present, the Merovingian bloodline enjoys a
legitimate claim to its rightful heritage.
Here, in the so-called Prieure de Sion, was a possible explanation for the reference to
"Sion' in the parchments found by Berenger Sauniere. Here, too, was an explanation for
the curious signature, "P.S." which appeared on one of those parchments, and on the
tombstone of Marie de Blanchefort.
Nevertheless, we were extremely sceptical, like most people, about 'conspiracy theories of
history'; and most of the above assertions struck us as irrelevant, improbable and/or
absurd. But the fact remained that certain people were promulgating them, and doing so
quite seriously; quite seriously and, there was reason to believe, from positions of
considerable power. And whatever the truth of the assertions, they were clearly
connected in some way with the mystery surrounding Sauniere and Rennes-le Chateau.
We, therefore, embarked on a systematic examination of what we had begun to call,
ironically, the "Prieure documents', and of the assertions they contained. We
endeavoured to subject these assertions to careful critical scrutiny and determine whether
they could be in any way substantiated. We did so with a cynical, almost derisory
scepticism, fully convinced the outlandish claims would wither under even cursory
investigation. Although we could not know it at the time, we were to be greatly surprised.
98
Two The Secret Society
99
5 The Order Behind the Scenes
We had already suspected the existence of a group of individuals, if not a coherent
"order', behind the Knights Templar. The claim that the Temple was created by the
Prieure de Sion thus seemed slightly more plausible than the other assertions in the
"Prieure documents'. It was with this claim, therefore, that we started our examination.
As early as 1962 the Prieure de Sion had been mentioned, briefly,
cryptically and in passing, in a work by Gerard de Sede. The first
detailed reference to it that we found, however, was a single page in
the Dossiers secrets. At the top of this page there is a quotation
from Rene Grousset, one of the foremost twentieth-century authorities
on the Crusades, whose monumental opus on the subject, published during
the 1930s, is regarded as a seminal work by such modern historians as
Sir Steven Runciman. The quotation refers to Baudouin I, younger
brother of Godfroi de Bouillon,
Duke of Lorraine and conqueror of the Holy Land. On Godfroi's death,
Baudouin accepted the crown offered him and thereby became the first
official king of Jerusalem. According to Rene Grousset, there existed,
through Bau_douin I, a "royal tradition'. And because it was "founded
on the rock of Sion'," this tradition was "equal' to the reigning
dynasties in
Europe the Capetian dynasty of France, the Anglo Norman (Plantagenet)
dynasty of England, the Hohenstauffen and Habsburg dynasties which
presided over Germany and the old Holy Roman Empire. But Baudouin and
his descendants were elected kings, not kings by blood. Why, then,
should
Grousset speak of a 'royal tradition' which "existed through' him?
Grousset himself does not explain. Nor does he explain why this
tradition, because it was "founded on the rock of Sion', should be
100
"equal' to the foremost dynasties of Europe. On the page in the
Dossiers secrets Grousset's quotation is followed by an allusion to the
mysterious Prieure de Sion or Ordre de Sion, as it was apparently
called at the time. According to the text, the Ordre de Sion was
founded by Godfroi de Bouillon in 1090, nine years before the conquest
of
Jerusalem although there are other "Prieure documents' which give the
founding date as 1099. According to the text, Baudouin, Godfroi's
younger brother, 'owed his throne' to the Order. And according to the
text, the
Order's official seat, or 'headquarters', was a specific abbey the
Abbey of Notre Dame duMont de Sion in Jerusalem. Or perhaps just
outside
Jerusalem on Mount Sion, the famous 'high hill' just south of the city.
On consulting all standard twentieth-century works on the Crusades, we found no mention
whatever of any Ordre de Sion. We therefore undertook to establish whether or not such
an Order ever existed and whether it could have had the power to confer thrones. To do
that, we were obliged to rummage through sheaves of antiquated documents and
charters. We did not just seek explicit references to the Order. We also sought some
trace of its possible influence and activities. And we endeavoured to confirm whether or
not there was an abbey called Notre Dame duMont de Sion.
To the south of Jerusalem looms the 'high hill' of Mount Sion. In 1099, when Jerusalem
fell to Godfroi de Bouillon's crusaders, there stood on this hill the ruins of an old Byzantine
basilica, dating supposedly from the fourth century and called 'the Mother of all Churches'
- a most suggestive title. According to numerous extant charters, chronicles and
contemporary accounts, an abbey was built on the site of these ruins. It was built at the
express command of Godfroi de Bouillon. It must have been an imposing edifice, a self-
contained community. According to one chronicler, writing in 1 1 72, it was extremely well
fortified, with its own walls, towers and battlements. And this structure was called the
Abbey of Notre Dame duMont de Sion.
Someone, obviously, had to occupy the premises. Could they have been
an autonomous 'order', taking their name from the site itself? Could
the occupants of the abbey indeed have been the Ordre de Sion? It was
101
not unreasonable to assume so. The knights and monks who occupied the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also installed by Godfroi, were formed
into an official and duly constituted 'order' the Order of the Holy
Sepulchre. The same principle might well have obtained for the
occupants of the abbey on Mount Sion, and it would seem to have done
so. According to the leading nineteenth-century expert on the subject,
the abbey 'was inhabited by a chapter of Augustinian canons, charged
with serving the sanctuaries under the direction of an abbot. The
community assumed the double name of
"Sainte-Marie duMont Syon et du Saint-Esprit' 1.12 And another
historian, writing in 1698, is more explicit still: "There were in
Jerusalem during the
Crusades .. . knights attached to the Abbey of Notre Dame de Sion who
took the name of "Chevaliers de 1 "Ordre de Notre Dame de Sion' 1.13
If this were not sufficient confirmation, we also discovered documents
of the period original documents -bearing the seal and signature of one
or another prior of "Notre Dame de Sion'. There is a charter, for
example, signed by a Prior Arnaldus and dated July 1 9th, 1 1 1 6.4 On
another charter, dated May 2nd, 1 125, Arnaldus's name appears in
conjunction with that of
Hugues de Payen, first Grand Master of the "Temple. 5
So far the "Prieure documents' had proved valid, and we could assert that an Ordre de
Sion did exist by the turn of the twelfth century.
Whether or not the Order had actually been formed earlier, however,
remained an open question. There is no consistency about which comes
first, an order, or the premises in which it is housed. The
Cistercians, for instance, "took their name from a specific place,
Citeaux. On the other hand, the Franciscans and
Benedictines to cite but two examples took their names from individuals, and pre-dated
any fixed abode. The most we could say, therefore, was that an abbey existed by 1 100
and housed an order of the same name which may have been formed earlier.
The "Prieure documents' imply that it was, and there is some evidence
to suggest, albeit vaguely and obliquely, that this may indeed have
been the case. It is known that in 1070, twenty-nine years before the
First Crusade, a specific band of monks, from Calabria in southern
Italy, arrived in the vicinity of the Ardennes Forest, part of Godfroi
de Bouillon's domains. 6
102
According to Gerard de Sede, this band of monks was led by an
individual called "Ursus' - a name which the "Prieure documents' consistently associate
with the Merovingian bloodline. On their arrival in the Ardennes, the Calabrian monks
obtained the patronage of Mathilde de Toscane, Duchess of Lorraine who was Godfroi de
Bouillon's aunt and, in effect, foster-mother. From Mathilde the monks received a tract of
land at Orval, not far from Stenay, where Dagobert II had been assassinated some five
hundred years earlier. Here an abbey was established to house them. Nevertheless they
did not remain at Orval very long. By 1 108 they had mysteriously disappeared, and no
record of their whereabouts survives. Tradition says they returned to Calabria. Orval, by
1131, had become one of the fiefs owned by Saint Bernard.
Before their departure from Orval, however, the Calabrian monks may
have left a crucial mark on Western history. According to Gerard de
Sede, at least, they included the man subsequently known as Peter the
Hermit. If this is so, it would be extremely significant, for Peter
the Hermit is often believed to have been Godfroi de Bouillon's
personal tutor." Nor is that his only claim to fame. In 1095, along
with Pope Urban II, Peter made himself known throughout Christendom by
charismatic ally preaching the need for a crusade a holy war which
would reclaim Christ's sepulchre and the
Holy Land from the hands of the Muslim infidel. Today Peter the Hermit is regarded as
one of the chief instigators of the Crusades.
On the basis of hints intimated in the "Prieure documents', we began to
wonder whether there might have been some sort of shadowy continuity
between the monks of Orval, Peter the Hermit and the Ordre de Sion. It
would certainly seem that the monks at Orval were not just a random
band of itinerant religious devotees. On the contrary their movements
their collective arrival in the Ardennes from Calabria and their
mysterious disappearance en masse attest to some kind of cohesion, some
kind of organisation and perhaps a permanent base somewhere. And if
Peter were a member of this band of monks, his preaching of a crusade
might have been a manifestation not of rampant fanaticism, but of
calculated policy. If he was Godfroi's personal tutor, moreover, he
103
might well have played some role in convincing his pupil to embark for
the
Holy Land. And when the monks vanished from Orval, they might not have
returned to Calabria after all. They might have established themselves
in
Jerusalem, perhaps in the Abbey of Notre Dame de Sion.
This, of course, was only a speculative hypothesis, with no documentary
confirmation. Again, however, we soon found fragments of
circumstantial evidence to support it. When Godfroi de Bouillon
embarked for the Holy
Land, he is known to have been accompanied by an entourage of anonymous figures who
acted as advisors and administrators the equivalent, in effect, of a modern general staff.
But Godfroi's was not the only Christian army to embark for Palestine. There were no less
than three others, each commanded by an illustrious and influential Western potentate. If
the crusade proved successful, if Jerusalem did fall and a Frankish kingdom were
established, any one of these four potentates would have been eligible to occupy its
throne. And yet Godfroi seems to have known beforehand that he would be selected.
Alone among the European commanders, he renounced his fiefs, sold all his goods and
made it apparent that the Holy Land, for the duration of his life, would be his domain.
In 1 099, immediately after the capture of Jerusalem, a group of
anonymous figures convened in secret conclave. The identity of this
group has eluded all historical inquiry although Guillaume de Tyre,
writing three-quarters of a century later, reports that the most
important of them was 'a certain bishop from Calabria '.8 In any case
the purpose of the meeting was clear to elect a king of Jerusalem. And
despite a persuasive claim by Raymond,
Count of Toulouse, the mysterious and obviously influential electors promptly offered the
throne to Godfroi de Bouillon. With uncharacteristic modesty, Godfroi declined the title,
accepting instead that of "Defender of the Holy Sepulchre'. In other words, he was a king
in everything but name.
And when he died, in 1 100, his brother, Baudouin, did not hesitate to accept the name as
well.
Could the mysterious conclave which elected Godfroi ruler have been the
elusive monks from Orval including perhaps Peter the Hermit, who was in
104
the Holy Land at the time and enjoyed considerable authority? And
could this same conclave have occupied the abbey on Mount Sion? In
short, could those three ostensibly distinct groups of individuals the
monks from Orval, the conclave who elected Godfroi and the occupants of
Notre Dame de Sion -have been one and the same? The possibility cannot
be proved, but neither can it be dismissed out of hand. And if it is
true, it would certainly attest to the Ordre de
Sion's power a power which included the right to confer thrones.
The Mystery Surrounding the Foundation of the Knights Templar
The text in the Dossiers secrets goes on to refer to the Order of the
Temple. The founders of the Temple are specifically listed as, "Hugues
de
Payen, Bisol de St. Omer and Hugues, Comte de Champagne, along with
certain members of the Ordre de Sion, Andre de Montbard, Archambaud de
Saint-Aignan,
Nivard de Montdidier, Gondemar and Rossal'.9
We were already familiar with Hugues de Payen and Andre de Montbard,
Saint
Bernard's uncle. We were also familiar with Hugues, Count of Champagne
who donated the land for Saint Bernard's abbey at Clairvaux, became a
Templar himself in 1124 (pledging fealty to his own vassal) and received from the bishop
of Chartres the letter quoted in Chapter 3. But although the count of Champagne's
connection with the Templars was well known, we had never before seen him cited as one
of their founders. In the Dossiers secrets he is. And Andre de Montbard, Saint Bernard's
shadowy uncle, is listed as belonging to the Ordre de Sion, in other words to another
Order, which predates the Order -of the Temple and plays an instrumental role in the
Temple's creation.
Nor is that all. The text in the Dossiers secrets states that in March
1117, Baudouin 1 , 'who owed his throne to Sion', was 'obliged' to
negotiate the constitution of the Order of the Temple at the site of
Saint Leonard of Acre. Our own research revealed that Saint Leonard of
Acre was in fact one of the fiefs of the OFdre de Sion. But we were
uncertain why Baudouin should have been 'obliged' to negotiate the
Temple's constitution. In
105
French the verb certainly connotes a degree of coercion or pressure.
And the implication in the Dossiers secrets was that this pressure was
brought to bear by the Ordre de Sion to whom Baudouin "owed his
throne'. If this were the case, the
Ordre de Sion would have been a most influential and powerful organisation an
organisation which could not only confer thrones, but also, apparently, compel a king to do
its bidding.
If the Ordre de Sion was in fact responsible for Godfroi de Bouillon's election, then
Baudouin, Godfroi's younger brother, would have 'owed his throne' to its influence. As we
had already discovered, moreover, there was indisputable evidence that the Order of the
Temple existed, at least in embryonic form, a good four years before the generally
accepted foundation date of 1 1 1 8. In 1 1 1 7 Baudouin was a sick man, whose death was
patently imminent. It is therefore possible that the Knights Templar were active, albeit in
an ex officio capacity, long before 1 1 18 as, say, a military or administrative arm of the
Ordre de Sion, housed in its fortified abbey. And it is possible that King Baudouin, on his
deathbed, was compelled by illness, by the Ordre de Sion or by both to grant the
Templars some official status, to give them a constitution and make them public.
In researching the Templars we had already begun to discern a web of intricate, elusive
and provocative connections, the shadowy vestiges perhaps of some ambitious design.
On the basis of these connections, we had formulated a tentative hypothesis. Whether
our hypothesis was accurate or not, we could not know; but the vestiges of a design had
now become even more apparent. We assembled the fragments of the pattern as follows:
1) In the late eleventh century a mysterious group of monks from Calabria appears in the
Ardennes, where they are welcomed, patronised and given land at Orval by Godfroi de
Bouillon's aunt and foster-mother. 2) A member of this group may have been Godfroi's
personal tutor and may have co-instigated the First Crusade. 3) Some time before 1 108
the monks at Orval decamp and disappear. Although there is no record of their
destination, it may well have been Jerusalem.
106
Certainly Peter the Hermit embarked for Jerusalem; and if he was one
of the monks at Orval, it is probable that his brethren later joined
him. 4) In 1099 Jerusalem falls and Godfroi is offered a throne by an
anonymous conclave a leader of whom, like the monks of Orval, is of
Calabrian origin. 5) An abbey is built at Godfroi's behest on Mount
Sion, which houses an order of the same name as itself an order which
may comprise the individuals who offered him the throne. 6) By 1 1 14
the Knights Templar are already active, perhaps as the Ordre de
Sion's armed entourage; but their constitution is not negotiated until 1117, and they
themselves are not made public until the following year.
7) In 1 1 15 Saint Bernard member of the Cistercian Order, then on the
brink of economic collapse emerges as the pre-eminent spokesman of
Christendom. And the formerly destitute Cistercians rapidly become one of the most
prominent, influential and wealthy institutions in Europe.
8) In 1 131 Saint Bernard receives the abbey of Orval, vacated some
years before by the monks from Calabria. Orval then becomes a
Cistercian house. 9) At the same time certain obscure figures seem to
move constantly in and out of these events, stitching the tapestry
together in a manner that is not altogether clear. The count of
Champagne, for example, donates the land for Saint Bernard's abbey at
Clairvaux, establishes a court at Troyes, whence the Grail romances
subsequently issue and, in 1114, contemplates joining the Knights
Templar whose first recorded Grand Master, Hugues de
Payen, is already his vassal. 10) Andre de Montbard Saint Bernard's
uncle and an alleged member of the
Ordre de Sion joins Hugues de Payen in founding the Knights Templar.
Shortly thereafter Andre's two brothers join Saint Bernard at
Clairvaux. 1 1 ) Saint Bernard becomes an enthusiastic public relations
exponent for the
Templars, contributes to their official incorporation and the
drawing-up of their rule -which is essentially that of the Cistercians,
Bernard's own order. 1 2) Between approximately 1115 and 1 1 40, both
Cistercians and Templars begin to prosper, acquiring vast sums of money
107
and tracts of land. Again we could not but wonder whether this
multitude of intricate connections was indeed wholly coincidental. Were we looking at a
number of essentially disconnected people, events and phenomena which just
"happened', at intervals, to overlap and cross each other's paths? Or were we dealing
with something that was not random or coincidental at all? Were we dealing with a plan of
some sort, conceived and engineered by some human agency? And could that agency
have been the Ordre de Sion?
Could the Ordre de Sion have actually stood behind both Saint Bernard and the Knights
Templar? And could both have been acting in accordance with some carefully evolved
policy?
Louis VII and the Prieure de Sion
The "Prieure documents' gave no indication of the Ordre de Sion's activities between 1118
the public foundation of the Templars and 1 152.
For the whole of that time, it would seem, the Ordre de Sion remained
based in the
Holy Land, in the abbey outside Jerusalem. Then, on his return from
the
Second Crusade, Louis VII of France is said to have brought with him
ninety-five members of the Order. There is no indication of the
capacity in which they might have attended the king, nor why he should
have extended his bounty to them. But if the Ordre de Sion was indeed
the power behind the
Temple, that would constitute an explanation since Louis VII was heavily indebted to the
Temple, both for money and military support.
In any case the
Ordre de Sion, created half a century previously by Godfroi de Bouillon, in 1 152
established or re-established a foothold in France. According to the text, sixty two
members of the Order were installed at the "large priory' of Saint-Samson at Orleans,
which King Louis had donated to them. Seven were reportedly incorporated into the
fighting ranks of the Knights Templar. And twenty-six two groups of thirteen each are said
to have entered the "small Priory of the Mount of Sion', situated at Saint jean le Blanc on
the outskirts of Orleans. '
In trying to authenticate these statements, we suddenly found ourselves
on readily provable ground. The charters by which Louis VII installed
the
108
Ordre de Sion at Orleans are still extant. Copies have been
reproduced in a number of sources, and the originals can be seen in the
municipal archives of Orleans. In the same archives there is also a
Bull dated 1 178, from Pope Alexander III, which officially confirms the
Ordre de Sion's possessions. These possessions attest to the Order's
wealth, power and influence. They include houses and large tracts of
land in Picardy, in France (including Saint-Samson at
Orleans), in Lombardy, Sicily, Spain and Calabria, as well, of course, as a number of sites
in the Holy Land, including Saint Leonard at Acre.
Until the
Second World War, in fact, there were in the archives of Orleans" no less than twenty
charters specifically citing the Ordre de Sion. During the bombing of the city in 1940 all
but three of these disappeared.
The "Cutting of the Ehn' at Gisors
If the "Prieure documents' can be believed, 1 1 88 was a year of crucial
importance for both Sion and the Knights Templar. A year before, in
1187,
Jerusalem had been lost to the Saracens chiefly through the impetuosity
and ineptitude of Gerard de Ridefort, Grand Master of the Temple. The
text in the Dossiers secrets is considerably more severe. It speaks
not of
Gerard's impetuosity or ineptitude, but of his "treason' - a very harsh
word indeed. What constituted this 'treason' is not explained. But as
a result of it the 'initiates' of Sion are said to have returned en
masse to France presumably to Orleans. Logically this assertion is
plausible enough. When
Jerusalem fell to the Saracens, the abbey on Mount Sion would obviously have fallen as
well. Deprived of their base in the Holy Land, it would not be surprising if the abbey's
occupants had sought refuge in France where a new base already existed.
The events of 1 187 Gerard de Ridefort's 'treason' and the loss of
Jerusalem seem to have precipitated a disastrous rift between the Ordre
de Sion and the Order of the Temple. It is not clear precisely why
this should have occurred; but according to the Dossiers secrets the
following year witnessed a decisive turning-point in the affairs of
109
both orders. In 1 188 a formal separation supposedly occurred between
the two institutions. The Ordre de Sion, which had created the Knights Templar, now
washed its hands of its celebrated proteges. The 'parent', in other words, officially
disowned the 'child'.
This rupture is said to have been commemorated by a ritual or ceremony of some sort. In
the Dossiers secrets and other "Prieure documents', it is referred to as "the cutting of the
elm', and allegedly took place at Gisors.
Accounts are garbled and obscure, but history and tradition both confirm that something
extremely odd occurred at Gisors in 1 188 which did involve the cutting of an elm. On the
land adjacent to the fortress there was a meadow called the Champ Sacre the Sacred
Field.
According to medieval chroniclers, the site had been deemed sacred
since pre-Christian times, and during the twelfth century had provided
the setting for numerous meetings between the kings of England and
France. In the middle of the Sacred Field stood an ancient elm. And
in 1188, during a meeting between Henry II of
England and Philippe II of France, for some unknown reason this elm became an object of
serious, even bloody, contention.
According to one account, the elm afforded the only shade on the
Sacred
Field. It was said to be more than eight hundred years old, and so large that nine men,
linking hands, could barely encompass its trunk. Under the shade of this tree Henry II and
his entourage supposedly took shelter, leaving the French monarch, who arrived later, to
the merciless sunlight.
By the third day of negotiations French tempers had become frayed by the heat, insults
were exchanged by the men-at-arms and an arrow flew from the ranks of Henry's Welsh
mercenaries. This provoked a full-scale onslaught by the French, who greatly
outnumbered the English. The latter sought refuge within the walls of Gisors itself, while
the French are said to have cut down the tree in frustration. Philippe II then stormed back
to Paris in a huff, declaring he had not come to Gisors to play the role of woodcutter.
The story has a characteristic medieval simplicity and quaintness,
contenting itself with superficial narrative while hinting between the
lines at something of greater import explanations and motivations which
are left unexplored. In itself it would almost seem to be absurd -as
110
absurd and possibly apocryphal as, say, the tales associated with the
founding of the Order of the Garter.
And yet there is confirmation of the story, if not its specific details, in other accounts.
According to another chronicle, Philippe seems to have given notice
to
Henry that he intended to cut down the tree. Henry supposedly
responded by reinforcing the trunk of the elm with bands of iron. On
the following day the French armed themselves and formed a phalanx of
five squadrons, each commanded by a distinguished lord of the realm,
who advanced on the elm, accompanied by sling men as well as carpenters
equipped with axes and hammers. A struggle is said to have ensued, in
which Richard Coeur de Lion,
Henry's eldest son and his heir, participated, attempting to protect
the tree and spilling considerable blood in the process. Nevertheless,
the
French held the field at the end of the day, and the tree was cut down.
This second account implies something more than a petty squabble or minor skirmish. It
implies a full-scale engagement, involving substantial numbers and possibly substantial
casualties. Yet no biography of Richard makes much of the affair, still less explores it.
Again, however, the "Prieure documents' were confirmed by both recorded history and
tradition to the extent, at least, that a curious dispute did occur at Gisors in 1 188, which
involved the cutting of an elm.
There is no external confirmation that this event was related in any
way to either the
Knights Templar or the Ordre de Sion. On the other hand, the existing
accounts of the affair are too vague, too scant, too incomprehensible,
too contradictory to be accepted as definitive. It is extremely
probable that
Templars were present at the incident Richard I was frequently accompanied by knights of
the Order, and, moreover, Gisors, thirty years before, had been entrusted to the Temple.
Given the existing evidence, it is certainly possible, if not likely, that the cutting of the elm
involved something more or something other than the accounts which have been
preserved for posterity imply.
Indeed, given the sheer oddness of surviving accounts, it would not be
surprising if there were something else involved -something overlooked,
or perhaps never made public, by history, something, in short, of which
111
the surviving accounts are a species of allegory, simultaneously
intimating and concealing an affair of much greater import.
Ormus
From 1 188 onwards, the "Prieure documents' maintain, the Knights
Templar were autonomous no longer under the authority of the Ordre de
Sion, or acting as its military and administrative arm. From 1 188
onwards the
Templars were officially free to pursue their own objectives and ends,
to follow their own course through the remaining century or so of their
existence to their grim doom in 1 307. And in the meantime, as of 1 1 88,
the
Ordre de Sion is said to have undergone a major administrative restructuring of its own.
Until 1 188 the Ordre de Sion and the Order of the Temple are said to have shared the
same Grand Master. Hugues de Payen and Bertrand de Blanchefort, for example, would
thus have presided over both institutions simultaneously. Commencing in 1 188, however,
after the 'cutting of the elm', the Ordre de Sion reportedly selected its own Grand Master,
who had no connection with the Temple. The first such Grand Master, according to the
"Prieure documents', was Jean de Gisors.
In 1 188 the Ordre de Sion is also said to have modified its name, adopting the one which
has allegedly obtained to the present the Prieure de Sion.
And, as a kind of subtitle, it is said to have adopted the curious name "Ormus'. This
subtitle was supposedly used until 1306 - a year before the arrest of the French Templars.
The device for "Ormus' was U. and involves a kind of acrostic or anagram which combines
a number of key words and symbols. "Ours' means bear in French "Ursus' in Latin, an
echo, as subsequently became apparent, of Dagobert II and the Merovingian dynasty.
"Ome' is French for 'elm'. "Or', of course, is 'gold'. And the 'm' which forms the frame
enclosing the other letters is not only an 'm', but also the astrological sign for Virgo
connoting, in the language of medieval iconography, Notre Dame.
Our researches revealed no reference anywhere to a medieval order or
112
institution bearing the name "Ormus'. In this case we could find no
external substantiation for the text in the
Dossiers secrets, nor even any circumstantial evidence to argue its veracity. On the other
hand, "Ormus' does occur in two other radically different contexts. It figures in Zoroastrian
thought and in Gnostic texts, where it is synonymous with the principle of light. And it
surfaces again among the pedigrees claimed by late eighteenthcentury Freemasonry.
According to Masonic teachings, Ormus was the name of an Egyptian sage
and mystic, a Gnostic 'adept' of Alexandria. He lived, supposedly,
during the early years of the Christian epoch. In A.D. 46 he and six
of his followers were supposedly converted to a form of Christianity by
one of Jesus's disciples, Saint Mark in most accounts. From this
conversion a new sect or order is said to have been born, which fused
the tenets of early
Christianity with the teachings of other, even older mystery schools. To our knowledge
this story cannot be authenticated. At the same time, however, it is certainly plausible.
During the first century A.D.
Alexandria was a veritable hotbed of mystical activity, a crucible in
which Judaic, Mithraic,
Zoroastrian, Pythagorean, Hermetic and Neo-Platonic doctrines suffused the air and
combined with innumerable others. Teachers of every conceivable kind abounded; and it
would hardly be surprising if one of them adopted a name implying the principle of light.
According to Masonic tradition, in A.D. 46 Ormus is said to have
conferred on his newly constituted 'order of initiates' a specific
identifying symbol - a red or a rose cross. Granted, the red cross was
subsequently to find an echo in the blazon of the Knights Templar, but
the import of the text in the Dossiers secrets, and in other "Prieure
documents', is unequivocally clear. One is intended to see in Ormus
the origins of the so-called
Rose-Croix, or Rosicrucians. And in 1 188 the Prieure de Sion is said to have adopted a
second subtitle, in addition to "Ormus'. It is said to have called itself V'Ordre de la Rose-
Croix Veritas.
At this point we seemed to be in very questionable territory, and the text in the "Prieure
documents' began to appear highly suspect. We were familiar with the claims of the
modern "Rosicrucians' in California and other contemporary organisations, who claim for
themselves, after the fact, a pedigree harking back to the mists of antiquity which includes
most of the world's great men.
113
An "Order of the Rose-Croix' dating from 1 188 appeared equally
spurious.
As Frances Yates had demonstrated convincingly, there is no known
evidence of any "Rosicrucians' (at least by that name) before the early
seventeenth century or perhaps the last years of the sixteenth, 'z The
myth surrounding the legendary order dates from approximately 1605, and
first gained impetus a decade later with the publication of three
inflammatory tracts. These tracts, which appeared in 1614, 1615 and
1616 respectively, proclaimed the existence of a secret brotherhood or
confraternity of mystical 'initiates', allegedly founded by one
Christian Rosenkreuz who, it was maintained, was born in 1378 and died,
at the hoary age of 106, in 1484. Christian Rosenkreuz and his secret
confraternity are now generally acknowledged to have been fictitious a
hoax of sorts, devised for some purpose no one has yet satisfactorily
explained, although it was not without political repercussions at the
time. Moreover, the author of one of the three tracts, the famous
Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz, which appeared in 1616, is
now known. He was Johann Valentin Andrea, a
German writer and theologian living in Wurttemberg, who confessed that he composed
The Chemical Wedding as a 'ludibrium' - a 'joke', or perhaps a 'comedy' in Dante's and
Balzac's sense of the word. There is reason to believe that Andrea, or one of his
associates, composed the other "Roiscrucian' tracts as well; and it is to this source that
"Roiscrucianism', as it evolved and as one thinks of it today, can be traced.
If the "Prieure documents' were accurate, however, we would have to reconsider, and
think in terms of something other than a seventeenth-century hoax. We would have to
think in terms of a secret order or society that actually existed, a genuine clandestine
brotherhood or confraternity. It need not have been wholly or even primarily mystical. It
might well have been largely political. But it would have existed a full 425 years before its
name ever became public, and a good two centuries before its legendary founder is
alleged to have lived.
Again we found no substantiating evidence. Certainly the rose has been
a mystical symbol from time immemorial, and enjoyed a particular vogue
114
during the Middle Ages in the popular Romance of the Rose by jean de
Meung, for instance, and in Dante's Paradise And the red cross was
also a traditional symbolic motif. Not only was it the blazon of the
Knights
Templar. It subsequently became the Cross of Saint George and, as such, was adopted
by the Order of the Garter created some thirty years after the fall of the Temple. But
though roses and red crosses abounded as symbolic motifs, there was no evidence of an
institution or an order, still less of a secret society.
On the other hand, Frances Yates maintains that there were secret societies functioning
long before the seventeenth-century "Rosicrucians' and that these earlier societies were,
in fact, "Rosicrucian' in political and philosophical orientation, if not necessarily in name. 13
Thus, in conversation with one of our researchers, she described Leonardo as a
"Rosicrucian' using the term as a metaphor to define his values and attitudes.
Not only that. In 1629, when "Rosicrucian' interest in Europe was at
its zenith, a man named Robert Denyau, cure of Gisors, composed an
exhaustive history of Gisors and the Gisors family. In this manuscript
Denyau states explicitly that the Rose-Croix was founded by jean de
Gisors in 1 1 88. In other words there is a verbatim seventeenth-century
confirmation of the claims made by the "Prieure documents'. Granted,
Denyau's manuscript was composed some four and a half centuries after
the alleged fact. But it constitutes an extremely important fragment
of evidence. And the fact that it issues from Gisors renders it all
the more important. '4
We were left, however, with no confirmation, only a possibility. But in every respect so far
the "Prieure documents' had proved astonishingly accurate. Thus it would have been rash
to dismiss them out of hand. We were not prepared to accept them on blind,
unquestioning faith. But we did feel obliged to reserve judgment.
The Prieure at Orleans
In addition to their more grandiose claims, the "Prieure documents'
offered information of a very different kind, minutiae so apparently
trivial and inconsequential that their significance eluded us. At the
115
same time the sheer un importance of this information argued in favour
of its veracity. Quite simply there seemed to be no point in inventing or concocting such
minor details. And what was more, the authenticity of many of these details could be
confirmed.
Thus, for example, Girard, abbot of the 'little priory' at Orleans
between 1 239 and 1 244. is said to have ceded a tract of land at Acre
to the
Teutonic Knights. Why this should warrant mention is unclear, but it can be definitively
established. The actual charter exists, dating from 1239 and bearing Girard's signature.
Information of a similar, albeit more suggestive, kind is offered on an abbot named Adam,
who presided over the "little priory' at Orleans in 1 281 .
In that year, according to the "Prieure documents', Adam ceded a tract
of land near Orval to the monks then occupying the abbey there
-Cistercians, who had moved in under the aegis of Saint Bernard a century and a
half before. We could not find written evidence of this particular transaction,
but it would seem plausible enough there are charters attesting tO numerous Other
transactions of the same nature.
What makes this one interesting, of course, is the recurrence of Orval,
which had figured earlier in our inquiry. Moreover, the tract of land
in question would seem to have been of special import, for the "Prieure
documents' tell us that
Adam incurred the wrath of the brethren of Sion for his donation so
much so that he was apparently compelled to renounce his position. The
act of abdication, according to the Dossiers secrets, was formally
witnessed by
Thomas de Sainville, Grand Master of the Order of Saint Lazarus.
Immediately afterwards Adam is said to have gone to Acre, then to have fled the city when
it fell to the Saracens and to have died in Sicily in 1 291 .
Again we could not find the actual charter of abdication. But Thomas
de
Sainville was Grand Master of the Order of Saint Lazarus in 1281 , and the headquarters
of Saint Lazarus were near Orleans where Adam's abdication would have taken place.
And there is no question that Adam went to Acre.
Two proclamations and two letters were in fact signed by him there, the
116
first dated August 1 281 ,"5 the second March 1 289. "6 The "Head' of the
Templars
According to the "Prieure documents', the Prieure de Sion was not, strictly speaking, a
perpetuation or continuation of the Order of the Temple: on the contrary, the text stresses
emphatically that the separation between the two orders dates from the 'cutting of the elm'
in 1 188. Apparently, however, some kind of rapport continued to exist, and, "in 1307,
Guillaume de Gisors received the golden head, Caput LVIII Fa from the Order of the
Temple.""
Our investigation of the Templars had already acquainted us with this mysterious head.
To link it with Sion, however, and with the seemingly important Gisors family, again struck
us as dubious as if the "Prieure documents' were straining to make powerful and
evocative connections.
And yet it was precisely on this point that we found some of our most
solid and intriguing confirmation. According to the official records
of the
Inquisition:
The guardian and administrator of the goods of the Temple at Paris, after the arrests, was
a man of the King named Guillaume Pidoye.
Before the
Inquisitors on May 1 1th, 1308, he declared that at the time of the
arrest of the Knights Templar, he, together with his colleague
Guillaume de Gisors and one Raynier Bourdon, had been ordered to
present to the Inquisition all the figures of metal or wood they had
found. Among the goods of the Temple they had found a large head of
silver gilt .. . the image of a woman, which
Guillaume, on May 11th, presented before the Inquisition. The head
carried a label, "CAPUT LVIIIm'."8
If the head continued to baffle us, the context in which Guillaume de
Gisors appeared was equally perplexing. He is specifically cited as
being a colleague of Guillaume Pidoye, one of King Philippe's men. In
other words he, like Philippe, would seem to have been hostile to the
Templars and participated in the attack upon them. According to the
"Prieure documents', however, Guillaume was Grand Master of the Prieure
de Sion at the time. Did this mean that Sion endorsed Philippe's
action against the Temple, perhaps even collaborated in it? There are
117
certain "Prieure documents' which hint that this may have been the
case that Sion, in some unspecified way, authorised and presided over
the dissolution of its unruly proteges. On the other hand, the
"Prieure documents' also imply that
Sion exercised a kind of paternal protectiveness towards at least
certain
Templars during the Order's last days. If this is true, Guillaume de Gisors might well have
been a 'double-agent'. He might well have been responsible for the 'leak' of Philippe's
plans, the means whereby the Templars received advance warning of the king's
machinations against them. If, after the formal separation in 1 1 88, Sion did in fact
continue to exercise some clandestine control over Temple affairs, Guillaume de Gisors
might have been partially responsible for the careful destruction of the Order's documents
and the unexplained disappearance of its treasure.
The Grand Masters of the Templars
In addition to the fragmentary information discussed above, the text in
the
Dossiers secrets includes three lists of names. The first of these is straightforward
enough -the least interesting, and the least open to controversy or doubt, being merely a
list of abbots who presided over Sion's lands in Palestine between 1 1 52 and 1 281 . Our
research confirmed its veracity: it appears elsewhere, independent of the Dossiers
secrets, and in accessible, unimpugnable sources. "9 The lists in these sources agree with
that in the Dossiers secrets, except that two names are missing in the sources. In this
case, then, the "Prieure documents' not only agree with verifiable history, but are more
comprehensive in that they fill certain lacunae.
The second list in the Dossiers secrets is a list of the Grand Masters
of the Knights Templar from 1118 until 1 1 90 in other words, from the
Temple's public foundation until its separation from Sion and the 'cutting of the elm' at
Gisors. At first there seemed nothing unusual or extraordinary about this list. When we
compared it to other lists, however those cited by acknowledged historians writing on the
Templars, for instance certain obvious discrepancies quickly emerged.
118
According to virtually all other known lists, there were ten Grand
Masters between 1118 and 1 190. According to the Dossiers secrets,
there were only eight. According to most other lists, Andre de
Montbard Saint Bernard's uncle was not only a co-founder of the Order,
but also its
Grand Master between 1 153 and 1 156. According to the Dossiers secrets, however,
Andre was never Grand Master, but would seem to have continued functioning as he does
all through his career behind the scenes. According to most other lists, Bertrand de
Blanchefort appears as sixth Grand Master of the Temple, assuming his office after Andre
de Montbard, in 1156.
According to the Dossiers secrets, Bertrand is not sixth, but fourth in succession,
becoming Grand Master in 1153. There were other such discrepancies and
contradictions, and we were uncertain what to make of them or how seriously to take
them. Because it disagreed with those compiled by established historians, were we to
regard the list in the Dossiers secrets as wrong?
It must be emphasised that no official or definitive list of the
Temple's
Grand Masters exists. Nothing of the sort has been preserved or handed down to
posterity. The Temple's own records were destroyed or disappeared, and the earliest
known compilation of the Order's Grand Masters dates from 1342 thirty years after the
Order itself was suppressed, and 225 years after its foundation. As a result historians
compiling lists of Grand Masters have based their findings on contemporary chroniclers -
on a man writing in 1 170, for example, who makes a passing allusion to one or another
individual as "Master' or "Grand Master' of the Temple. And additional evidence can be
obtained by examining documents and charters of the period, in which one or another
Templar official would append one or another title to his signature. It is thus hardly
surprising that the sequence and dating of Grand Masters should engender considerable
uncertainty and confusion.
Nor is it surprising that sequence and dating should vary, sometimes dramatically, from
writer to writer, account to account.
Nevertheless, there were certain crucial details like those summarised
above in which the "Prieure documents' deviated significantly from all
other sources. We could not, therefore, ignore such deviations. We
119
had to determine, as far as we could, whether the list in the Dossiers
secrets was based on sloppiness, ignorance or both; or, alternatively,
whether this list was indeed the definitive one, based on "inside'
information, inaccessible to historians. If Sion did create the
Knights Templar, and if Sion (or at least its records) did survive to the present day, we
could reasonably expect it to be privy to details unobtainable elsewhere.
Most of the discrepancies between the list in the Dossiers secrets and those in other
sources can be explained fairly easily. At this point, it is not worth exploring each such
discrepancy and accounting for it.
But a single example should serve to illustrate how and why such
discrepancies might occur. In addition to the Grand Master, the Temple
had a multitude of local masters a master for England, for Normandy,
for Aquitaine, for all the territories comprising its domains. There
was also an overall European master, and, it would appear, a maritime
master as well. In documents and charters these local or regional
masters would invariably sign themselves
"Magister Templi' - "Master of the Temple'. And on most occasions the
Grand
Master -through modesty, carelessness, indifference or slapdash
insouciance would also sign himself as nothing more than "Magister
Templi'. In other words Andre de Montbard, regional Master of
Jerusalem, would, on a charter, have the same designation after his
name as the Grand Master, Bertrand de
Blanchefort.
It is thus not difficult to see how an historian, working with one or
two charters alone and not cross-checking his references, might readily
misconstrue Andre's true status in the Order. By virtue of precisely
this kind of error, many lists of Templar Grand Masters include a man
named
Everard des Barres. But the Grand Master, by the Temple's own
constitutions, had to be elected by a general chapter in Jerusalem and
had to reside there. Our research revealed that Everard des Barres was
a regional master, elected and resident in France, who did not set foot
in the Holy Land until much later. On this basis he could be excised
from the list of Grand Masters as indeed he was in the Dossiers
secrets. It was specifically on such academic fine points that the
"Prieure documents' displayed a meticulous accuracy and precision we
120
could not imagine being contrived after the fact. We spent more than
a year considering and comparing various lists of
Templar Grand Masters. We consulted all writers on the Order, in
English,
French and German, and then checked their sources as well. We examined the
chronicles of the time like those of Guillaume de Tyre -and other contemporary accounts.
We consulted all the charters we could find and obtained comprehensive information on
all those known to be still extant.
We compared signatories and titles on numerous proclamations, edicts,
deeds and other Templar documents. As a result of this exhaustive
inquiry, it became apparent that the list in the Dossiers secrets was
more accurate than any other not only on the identity of the Grand
Masters, but on the dates of their respective regimes as well. If a
definitive list of the
Temple's Grand Masters did exist, it was in the Dossiers secrets. z
The accuracy of this list was not only important in itself. The implications attending it were
much broader. Granted, such a list might perhaps have been compiled by an extremely
careful researcher, but the task would have been monumental. It seemed much more
likely to us that a list of such accuracy attested to some repository of privileged or 'inside'
information information hitherto inaccessible to historians.
Whether our conclusion was warranted or not, we were confronted by one indisputable
fact someone had obtained access, somehow, to a list which was more accurate than any
other. And since that list despite its divergence from others more accepted proved so
frequently to be correct, it lent considerable credibility to the "Prieure documents' as a
whole. If the Dossiers secrets were demonstrably reliable in this critical respect, there
was somewhat less reason to doubt them in others.
Such reassurance was both timely and necessary. Without it, we might
well have dismissed the third list in the Dossiers secrets the Grand
Masters of the Prieure de Sion out of hand. For this third list, even
121
at a cursory glance, seemed absurd. 6 The Grand Masters and the
Underground Stream
In the Dossiers secrets," the following individuals are listed as successive Grand Masters
of the Prieure de Sion or, to use the official term, "Nautonnier', an old French word which
means 'navigator' or 'helmsman':
JeandeGisors 1188-1220
Marie de Saint-Clair 1220-66
Guillaume de Gisors 1266-1307
Edouardde Bar 1307-36
Jeanne de Bar 1336-51
Jean de Saint-Clair 1351-66
Blanche d'Evreux 1366-98
Nicolas Flamel 1398-1418
Rened'Anjou 1418-80
lolandede Bar 1480-83
Sandro Filipepi 1483-1510
Leonard de Vinci 1510-19
Connetable de Bourbon 1519-27
Ferdinand de Gonzague 1527-75
Louis de Nevers 1575-95
Robert Fludd 1595-1637
J. Valentin Andrea 1637-54
Robert Boyle 1654-91
Isaac Newton 1691-1727
Charles Radclyffe 1727-46
Charles de Lorraine 1746-80
Maximilian de Lorraine 1780-1801
Charles Nodier 1801-44
Victor Hugo 1844-85
Claude Debussy 1885-1918
Jean Cocteau 1918 When we first saw this list, it immediately provoked
our scepticism. On the one hand it includes a number of names which
one would automatically expect to find on such a list names of famous
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individuals associated with the 'occult' and 'esoteric'. On the other
hand it includes a number of illustrious and improbable names individuals whom, in certain
cases, we could not imagine presiding over a secret society. At the same time, many of
these latter names are precisely the kind that twentieth-century organisations have often
attempted to appropriate for themselves, thus establishing a species of spurious
'pedigree'. There are, for example, lists published by AMORC, the modern "Rosicrucians'
based in California, which include virtually every important figure in Western history and
culture whose values, even if only tangentially, happened to coincide with the Order's
own.
An often haphazard overlap or convergence of attitudes is deliberately
misconstrued as something tantamount to 'initiated membership'. And
thus one is told that
Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe and innumerable others were "Rosicrucians' implying that
they were card-carrying members who paid their dues regularly.
Our initial attitude towards the above list was equally cynical. Again, there are the
predictable names -names associated with the 'occult' and 'esoteric'. Nicolas Flamel, for
instance, is perhaps the most famous and well documented of medieval alchemists.
Robert Fludd, seventeenth-century philosopher, was an exponent of Hermetic thought and
other arcane subjects.
Johann Valentin Andrea, German contemporary of Fludd, composed, among
other things, some of the works which spawned the myth of the fabulous
Christian
Rosenkreuz. And there are also names like Leonardo da Vinci and
Sandro
Filipepi, who is better known as Botticelli. There are names of distinguished scientists,
like Robert Boyle and Sir Isaac Newton.
During the last two centuries the Prieure de Sion's Grand Masters are
alleged to have included such important literary and cultural figures
as Victor Hugo,
Claude Debussy and Jean Cocteau.
By including such names, the list in the Dossiers secrets could not but
appear suspect. It was almost inconceivable that some of the
individuals cited had presided over a secret society and still more, a
secret society devoted to 'occult' and 'esoteric' interests. Boyle and
Newton, for example, are hardly names that people in the twentieth
century associate with the 'occult' and 'esoteric'. And though Hugo,
123
Debussy and Cocteau were immersed in such matters, they would seem to
be too well known, too well researched and documented, to have exercised a "Grand
Mastership' over a secret order. Not, at any rate, without some word of it somehow
leaking out.
On the other hand the distinguished names are not the only names on the
list. Most of the other names belong to high-ranking European nobles,
many of whom are extremely obscure unfamiliar not only to the general
reader, but even to the professional historian. There is Guillaume de
Gisors, for instance, who in 1306 is said to have organised the Prieure
de Sion into an 'hermetic freemasonry'. And there is Guillaume's
grandfather, jean de
Gisors, who is said to have been Sion's first independent Grand Master,
assuming his position after the "cutting of the elm' and the separation
from the Temple in 1 188. There is no question that Jean de Gisors
existed historically. He was born in 1 133 and died in 1220. He is
mentioned in charters and was at least nominal lord of the famous
fortress in Normandy where meetings traditionally convened between
English and French kings took place, as did the cutting of the elm in
1 188. Jean seems to have been an extremely powerful and wealthy
landowner and until 1 193, a vassal of the king of England. He is also
known to have possessed property in England in Sussex, and the manor of
Titchfield in Hampshire. z According to the
Dossiers secrets, he met Thomas a Becket at Gisors in 1 169 though there is no indication
of the purpose of this meeting. We were able to confirm that Becket was indeed at Gisors
in 1 169,3 and it is therefore probable that he had some contact with the lord of the
fortress; but we could find no record of any actual encounter between the two men.
In short, jean de Gisors, apart from a few bland details, proved virtually untraceable. He
seemed to have left no mark whatever on history, save his existence and his title. We
could find no indication of what he did what might have constituted his claim to fame, or
have warranted his assumption of Sion's Grand Mastership. If the list of Sion's purported
Grand Masters was authentic, what, we wondered, did Jean do to earn his place on it?
And if the list were a latter-day fabrication, why should someone so obscure be included at
all?
124
There seemed to us only one possible explanation 135 which did not
really explain very much in fact. Like the other aristocratic names on the list of Sion's
Grand Masters, jean de Gisors appeared in the complicated genealogies which figured
elsewhere in the "Prieure documents'.
Together with those other elusive nobles, he apparently belonged to the
same dense forest of family trees ultimately descended, supposedly,
from the
Merovingian dynasty. It thus seemed evident to us that the Prieure de
Sion to a significant extent, at least was a domestic affair. In some
way the
Order appeared to be intimately associated with a bloodline and a lineage.
And it was their connection with this bloodline or lineage that perhaps accounted for the
various titled names on the list of Grand Masters.
From the list quoted above, it would seem that Sion's Grand Mastership has recurrently
shifted between two essentially distinct groups of individuals.
On the one hand there are the figures of monumental stature who through esoterica, the
arts or sciences have produced some impact on Western tradition, history and culture. On
the other hand, there are members of a specific and interlinked network of families noble,
and sometimes royal.
In some degree this curious juxtaposition imparted plausibility to the list. If one merely
wished to 'concoct a pedigree', there would be no point in including so many unknown or
long-forgotten aristocrats.
There would be no point, for instance, in including a man like Charles
de Lorraine Austrian field-marshal in the eighteenth century,
brother-in-law to the
Empress Maria Theresa, who proved himself signally inept on the
battlefield and was trounced in one engagement after another by
Frederick the Great of
Prussia.
In this respect, at least, the Prieure de Sion would seem to be both modest and realistic.
It does not claim to have functioned under the auspices of unqualified geniuses,
superhuman "masters', illumined "initiates', saints, sages or immortals. On the contrary, it
acknowledges its Grand Masters to have been fallible human beings, a representative
cross-section of humanity - a few geniuses, a few notables, a few "average specimens', a
few nonentities, even a few fools.
Why, we could not but wonder, would a forged or fabricated list include
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such a spectrum? If one wishes to contrive a list of Grand Masters,
why not make all the names on it illustrious? If one wishes to
"concoct a pedigree' which includes Leonardo,
Newton and Victor Hugo, why not also include Dante, Michelangelo,
Goethe and
Tolstoi instead of obscure people like Edouard de Bar and Maximilian
de
Lorraine? Why, moreover, were there so many 'lesser lights' on the list? Why a relatively
minor writer like Charles Nodier, rather than contemporaries like Byron or Pushkin? Why
an apparent' eccentric like Cocteau rather than men of such international prestige as
Andre Gide or Albert Camus? And why the omission of individuals like Poussin, whose
connection with the mystery had already been established? Such questions nagged at us,
and argued that the list warranted consideration before we dismissed it as an arrant fraud.
We therefore embarked on a lengthy and detailed study of the alleged
Grand
Masters their biographies, activities and accomplishments. In conducting this study we
tried, as far as we could, to subject each name on the list to certain critical questions:
1) Was there any personal contact, direct or indirect, between each alleged
Grand Master, his immediate predecessor and immediate successor? 2)
Was there any affiliation, by blood or otherwise, between each
alleged
Grand Master and the families who figured in the genealogies of the
"Prieure documents' with any of the families of purported Merovingian
descent, and especially the ducal house of Lorraine? 3) Was each
alleged Grand Master in any way connected with
Rennes-leChateau, Gisors, Stenay, Saint Sulpice or any of the other sites that had
recurred in the course of our previous investigation? 4)
If Sion defined itself as an "Hermetic freemasonry', did each alleged
Grand Master display a predisposition towards Hermetic thought or an involvement with
secret societies?
Although information on the alleged Grand Masters before 1400 was
difficult, sometimes impossible to obtain, our investigation of the
later figures yield some astonishing results and consistency. Many of
them were associated, in one way or another, with one or more of the
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sites that seemed to be relevant Rennes-leChateau, Gisors, Stenay or
Saint Sulpice. Most of the names on the list were either allied by
blood to the house of Lorraine or associated with it in some other
fashion; even Robert Fludd, for example, served as tutor to the sons of
the duke of Lorraine. From Nicolas Flamel on, every name on the list,
without exception, was steeped in Hermetic thought, and often also
associated with secret societies even men whom one would not readily
associate with such things, like Boyle and Newton. And with only one
exception, each alleged
Grand Master had some contact sometimes direct, sometimes through close
mutual friends with those who preceded and succeeded him. As far as we
could determine, there was only one apparent 'break in the chain'. And
even this which seems to have occurred around the French Revolution,
between
Maximilian of Lorraine and Charles Nodier is not by any means conclusive.
In the context of this chapter it is not feasible to discuss each
alleged
Grand Master in detail. Some of the more obscure figures assume significance only
against the background of a given age, and to explain this significance fully would entail
lengthy digressions into forgotten byways of history. In the case of the more famous
names, it would be impossible to do them justice in a few pages. In consequence the
relevant biographical material on the alleged Grand Masters and the connections between
them have been consigned to an appendix (see pp. 441-65). The present chapter will
dwell on broader social and cultural developments, in which a succession of alleged
Grand Masters played a collective part. It was in such social and cultural developments
that our research seemed to yield a discernible trace of the Prieure de Sion's hand.
Rene d'Anjou
Although little known today, Rene d'Anjou - "Good King Rene' as he was
the years immediately preceding the Renaissance. Born in 1408, during
his life he came to hold an awesome array of titles. Among the most
important were count of Bar, count of Provence, count of Piedmont,
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count of Guise, duke of Calabria, duke of Anjou, duke of Lorraine,
king of Hungary, king of Naples and Sicily, king of
Aragon, Valencia, Majorca and Sardinia -and, perhaps most resonant of all, king of
Jerusalem. This last was, of course, purely titular.
Nevertheless it invoked a continuity extending back to Godfroi de
Bouillon, and was acknowledged by other European potentates. One of
Rene's daughters,
Marguerite d'Anjou, in 1445 married Henry VI of England and played a prominent role in
the Wars of the Roses.
In its earlier phases Rene d'Anjou's career seems to have been in some
obscure way associated with that of Jeanne d'Arc. As far as is
known,
Jeanne was born in the town of Domremy, in the duchy of Bar, making
her
Rene's subject. She first impressed herself on history in 1429, when
she appeared at the fortress of Vaucouleurs, a few miles up the Meuse
from
Domremy. Presenting herself to the commandant of the fortress, she announced her
'divine mission' to save France from the English invaders and ensure that the dauphin,
subsequently Charles VII, was crowned king. In order to perform this mission, she would
have had to join the dauphin at his court at Chinon, on the Loire, far to the south-west.
But she did not request a passage to Chinon of the commandant at Vaucouleurs; she
requested a special audience with the duke of Lorraine Rene's father-in-law and great
uncle.
In deference to her request, Jeanne was granted an audience with the
duke at his capital in Nancy. When she arrived there, Rene d'Anjou is
known to have been present. And when the duke of Lorraine asked her
what she wished, she replied explicitly, in words that have constantly
perplexed historians, "Your son fin-law], a horse and some good men to
take me into France '.4
Both at the time and later, speculation was rife about the nature of
Rene's connection with Jeanne. According to some sources, probably
inaccurate, the two were lovers. But the fact remains that they knew
each other, and that
Rene was present when Jeanne first embarked on her mission. Moreover,
contemporary chroniclers maintain that when Jeanne departed for the
Dauphin's court at Chinon, Rene accompanied her. And not only that.
The same chroniclers assert that Rene was actually present at her side
during the siege of Orleans." In the centuries that followed a
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systematic attempt seems to have been made to expunge all trace of
Rene's possible role in Jeanne's life. Yet Rene's later biographers cannot account for his
whereabouts or activities between 1429 and 1431 the apex of Jeanne's career. It is
usually and tacitly assumed that he was vegetating at the ducal court in Nancy, but there
is no evidence to support this assumption.
Circumstances argue that Rene did accompany Jeanne to Chinon. For if
there was any one dominant personality at Chinon at the time, that
personality was lolande d'Anjou. It was lolande who provided the
febrile, weak willed dauphin with incessant transfusions of morale. It
was lolande who inexplicably appointed herself Jeanne's official
patroness and sponsor. It was lolande who overcame the court's
resistance to the visionary girl and obtained authorisation for her to
accompany the army to Orleans. It was
lolande who convinced the dauphin that Jeanne might indeed be the saviour she claimed
to be. It was lolande who contrived the dauphin's marriage to her own daughter. And
lolande was Rene d'Anjou's mother.
As we studied these details, we became increasingly convinced, like
many modern historians, that something was being enacted behind the
scenes some intricate, high-level intrigue, or audacious design. The
more we examined it, the more Jeanne d'Arc's meteoric career began to
suggest a 'put- up job' as if someone, exploiting popular legends of a
'virgin from
Lorraine' and playing ingeniously on mass psychology, had engineered and orchestrated
the Maid of Orleans's so-called mission. This did not, of course, presuppose the
existence of a secret society. But it rendered the existence of such a society decidedly
more plausible. And if such a society did exist, the man presiding over it might well have
been, Rene d'Anjou.
Rene and the Theme of Arcadia
If Rene was associated with Jeanne d'Arc, his later career, for the
most part, was distinctly less bellicose. Unlike many of his
contemporaries, Rene was less a warrior than a courtier. In this
respect he was misplaced in his own age; he was, in short, a man ahead
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of his time, anticipating the cultured Italian princes of the
Renaissance. An extremely literate person, he wrote prolifically and illuminated his own
books. He composed poetry and mystical allegories, as well as compendiums of
tournament rules. He sought to promote the advancement of knowledge and at one time
employed Christopher Columbus. He was steeped in esoteric tradition, and his court
included a Jewish astrologer, Cabalist and physician known as jean de Saint-Remy.
According to a number of accounts, Jean de Saint-Remy was the grandfather of
Nostradamus, the famous sixteenth-century prophet who was also to figure in our story.
Rene's interests included chivalry and the Arthurian and Grail romances.
Indeed he seems to have had a particular preoccupation with the Grail.
He is said to have taken great pride in a magnificent cup of red
porphyry, which, he asserted, had been used at the wedding at Cana. He
had obtained it, he claimed, at Marseilles where the Magdalene,
according to tradition, landed with the Grail. Other chroniclers speak
of a cup in
Rene's possession -perhaps the same one which bore a mysterious inscription incised
into the rim:
Qui bien beurra
Dieu voira.
Qui beurra tout dune baleine
Voita Dieu et la Madeleine. s
(He who drinks well Will see God. He who quaffs at a single draught
Will see God and the Magdalene.)
It would not be inaccurate to regard Rene d'Anjou as a major impetus
behind the phenomenon now called the Renaissance. By virtue of his
numerous
Italian possessions he spent some years in Italy; and through his
intimate friendship with the ruling Sforza family of Milan he
established contact with the Medicis of Florence. There is good reason
to believe that it was largely Rene's influence which prompted Cosimo
de' Medici to embark on a series of ambitious projects projects
130
destined to transform Western civilisation. In 1439, while Rene was
resident in Italy, Cosimo de' Medici began sending his agents all over
the world in quest of ancient manuscripts. Then, in 1444, Cosimo
founded Europe's first public library, the Library of San
Marco, and thus began to challenge the Church's long monopoly of learning.
At Cosimo's express commission, the corpus of Platonic, Neo-Platonic,
Pythagorean, Gnostic and Hermetic thought found its way into
translation for the first time and became readily accessible. Cosimo
also instructed the University of Florence to begin teaching Greek, for
the first time in
Europe for some seven hundred years. And he undertook to create an academy of
Pythagorean and Platonic studies. Cosimo's academy quickly generated a multitude of
similar institutions throughout the Italian peninsula, which became bastions of Western
esoteric tradition. And from them the high culture of the Renaissance began to blossom.
Rene d'Anjou not only contributed in some measure to the formation of
the academies, but also seems to have conferred upon them one of their
favourite symbolic themes that of Arcadia. Certainly it is in Rene's
own career that the motif of Arcadia appears to have made its debut in
post-Christian Western culture. In 1449, for example, at his court
of
Tarascon, Rene staged a series of pas dames curious hybrid amalgams of tournament
and masque, in which knights tilted against each other and, at the same time, performed a
species of drama or play. One of Rene's most famous pas dames was called "The Pas
dAmes of the Shepherdess'. Played by his mistress at the time, the "Shepherdess' was
an explicitly Arcadian figure, embodying both romantic and philosophical attributes. She
presided over a tourney in which knights assumed allegorical identities representing
conflicting values and ideas. The event was a singular fusion of the pastoral Arcadian
romance with the pageantry of the Round Table and the mysteries of the Holy Grail.
Arcadia figures elsewhere in Rene's work as well. It is frequently
denoted by a fountain or a tombstone, both of which are associated with
an underground stream. This stream is usually equated with the river
Alpheus the central river in the actual geographical Arcadia in Greece,
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which flows underground and is said to surface again at the Fountain
of Arethusa in Sicily. From the most remote antiquity to Coleridge's "Kubla Khan', the
river Alpheus has been deemed sacred. Its very name derives from the same root as the
Greek word "Alpha', meaning 'first' or 'source'.
For Rene, the motif of an underground stream seems to have been
extremely rich in symbolic and allegorical resonances. Among other
things, it would appear to connote the 'underground' esoteric
tradition of Pythagorean,
Gnostic, Cabalistic and Hermetic thought. But it might also connote something more than
a general corpus of teachings, perhaps some very specific factual information a 'secret' of
some sort, transmitted in clandestine fashion from generation to generation. And it might
connote an unacknowledged and thus 'subterranean' bloodline.
In the Italian academies the image of the 'underground stream' appears to have been
invested with all these levels of meaning. And it recurs consistently so much so, indeed,
that the academies themselves have often been labelled "Arcadian'. Thus, in 1502, a
major work was published, a long poem entitled Arcadia, by Jacopo Sannazaro and Rene
d'Anjou's Italian entourage of some years before included one Jacques Sannazar,
probably the poet's father. In 1553 Sannazaro's poem was translated into French. It was
dedicated, interestingly enough, to the cardinal of Unoncourt ancestor of the
twentiethcentury count of Unoncourt who compiled the genealogies in the "Prieure
documents'.
During the sixteenth century Arcadia and the 'underground stream' became a prominent
cultural fashion. In England they inspired Sir Philip Sidney's most important work,
Arcadia." In Italy they inspired such illustrious figures as Torquato 'lasso whose
masterpiece, Jerusalem Delivered, deals with the capture of the Holy City by Godfroi de
Bouillon. By the seventeenth century the motif of Arcadia had culminated in Nicolas
Poussin and "Les Bergers d'Arcadie'.
The more we explored the matter, the more apparent it became that
something - a tradition of some sort, a hierarchy of values or
attitudes, perhaps a specific body of information was constantly being
intimated by the 'underground stream'. This image seems to have
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assumed obsessive proportions in the minds of certain eminent
political families of the period all of whom, directly or indirectly,
figure in the genealogies of the "Prieure documents'. And the families
in question seem to have transmitted the image to their proteges in the
arts. From Rene d'Anjou, something seems to have passed to the
Medicis, the Sforzas, the Estes and the Gonzagas the last of whom,
according to the "Prieure documents', provided Sion with two Grand
Masters, Ferrante de Gonzaga and Louis de
Gonzaga, Duke of Nevers. From them it appears to have found its way
into the work of the epoch's most illustrious poets and painters,
including
Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci.
The Rosicrucian Manifestos
A somewhat similar dissemination of ideas occurred in the seventeenth
century, first in Germany, then spreading to England. In 1614 the
first of the so-called "Rosicrucian manifestos' appeared, followed by a
second tract a year later. These manifestos created a furore at the
time, provoking fulminations from the Church and the Jesuits, and
elicting fervently enthusiastic support from liberal factions in
Protestant Europe. Among the most eloquent and influential exponents
of "Rosicrucian thought was Robert
Fludd, who is listed as the Prieure de Sion's sixteenth Grand Master, presiding between
1595 and 1637.
Among other things, the "Rosicrucian manifestos'8 promulgated the story of the legendary
Christian Rosenkreuz. They purported to issue from a secret, 'invisible' confraternity of
'initiates' in Germany and France.
They promised a transformation of the world and of human knowledge in
accordance with esoteric, Hermetic principles the 'underground stream'
which had flowed from Rene d'Anjou through the Renaissance. A new
epoch of spiritual freedom was heralded, an epoch in which man would
liberate himself from his former shackles, would unlock hitherto
dormant 'secrets of nature', and would govern his own destiny in accord
with harmonious, all pervading universal and cosmic laws. At the same
133
time, the manifestos were highly inflammatory politically, fiercely
attacking the Catholic Church and the old Holy Roman Empire. These
manifestos are now generally believed to have been written by a. German
theologian and esotericist, Johann Valentin Andrea, listed as Grand
Master of the Prieure de Sion after Robert Fludd. If they were not
written by
Andrea, they were certainly written by one or more of his associates.
In 1616 a third "Rosicrucian' tract appeared, The Chemical Wedding of
Christian Rosenkreuz. Like the two previous works, The Chemical Wedding was originally
of anonymous authorship; but Andrea himself later confessed to having composed it as a
"joke' or comedy.
The Chemical Wedding is a complex Hermetic allegory, which subsequently
influenced such works as Goethe's Faust. As Frances Yates has
demonstrated, it contains unmistakable echoes of the English
esotericist, John Dee, who also influenced Robert Fludd. Andrea's work
also evokes resonances of the
Grail romances and of the Knights Templar Christian Rosenkreuz, for instance, is said to
wear a white tunic with a red cross on the shoulder.
In the course of the narrative a play is performed an allegory within an allegory. This play
involves a princess, of unspecified 'royal' lineage, whose rightful domains have been
usurped by the Moors and who is washed ashore in a wooden chest. The rest of the play
deals with her vicissitudes and her marriage to a prince who will help her regain her
heritage.
Our research revealed assorted second- and third-hand links between
Andrea and the families whose genealogies figure in the "Prieure
documents'. We discovered no firsthand or direct links, however,
except perhaps for
Frederick, Elector Palatine of the Rhine. Frederick was the nephew of an important
French Protestant leader, Henri de la Tour dAuvergne, Viscount of Turenne and Duke of
Bouillon Godfroi de Bouillon's old title. Henri was also associated with the Longueville
family, which figured prominently in both the "Prieure documents' and our own inquiry.
And in 1591 he had taken great trouble to acquire the town of Stenay.
In 1613 Frederick of the Palatinate had married Elizabeth Stuart,
daughter of James I of England, granddaughter of Mary Queen of Scots
and great-granddaughter of Marie de Guise and Guise was the cadet
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branch of the house of Lorraine. Marie de Guise, a century before,
had been married to the duke of Longueville and then, on his death, to
f ames V of
Scotland. This created a dynastic alliance between the houses of
Stuart and
Lorraine. In consequence the Stuarts began to figure, if only peripherally, in the
genealogies of the "Prieure documents': and Andrea, as well as the three alleged Grand
Masters who followed him, displayed varying degrees of interest in the Scottish royal
house.
During this period the house of
Lorraine was, to a significant degree, in eclipse. If Sion was a coherent and active order
at the time, it might therefore have transferred its allegiance -at least partially and
temporarily to the decidedly more influential Stuarts.
In any case Frederick of the Palatinate, after his marriage to
Elizabeth
Stuart, established an esoteric ally oriented court at his capital of
Heidelberg. As Frances Yates writes:
A culture was forming in the Palatinate which came straight out of
the
Renaissance but with more recent trends added, a culture which may be
defined by the adjective "Rosicrucian'. The prince around whom these
deep currents were swirling was Friedrich, Elector Palatine, and their
exponents were hoping for a politico-religious expression of their aims
...The
Frederickian movement .. . was an attempt to give those currents
politico-religious expression, to realise the ideal of Hermetic reform
centred on a real prince .. . It .. . created a culture, a
"Rosicrucian' state with its court centred on Heidelberg. 9
In short the anonymous "Rosicrucians' and their sympathisers seem to have invested
Frederick with a sense of mission, both spiritual and political.
And Frederick seems to have readily accepted the role imposed upon him,
together with the hopes and expectations it entailed. Thus, in 1 61 8,
he accepted the crown of Bohemia, offered him by that country's
rebellious nobles. In doing so he incurred the wrath of the papacy and
the Holy Roman
Empire and precipitated the chaos of the Thirty Years War. Within two
years he and Elizabeth had been driven into exile in Holland, and
Heidelberg was overrun by Catholic troops. And for the ensuing quarter
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of a century Germany became the major battleground for the most
bitter, bloody and costly conflict in European history before the
twentieth century a conflict in which the Church almost managed to
re-impose the hegemony she had enjoyed during the Middle Ages.
Amidst the turmoil raging around him, Andrea created a network of more
or less secret societies known as the Christian Unions. According to
Andrea's blueprint, each society was headed by an anonymous prince,
assisted by twelve others divided into groups of three each of whom was
to be a specialist in a given sphere of study." The original purpose
of the
Christian Unions was to preserve threatened knowledge especially the
most recent scientific advances, many of which the Church deemed
heretical. At the same time, however, the Christian Unions also
functioned as a refuge for persons fleeing the Inquisition which
accompanied the invading
Catholic armies, and was intent on rooting out all vestiges of
"Rosicrucian' thought. Thus numerous scholars, scientists, philosophers and esotericists
found a haven in Andrea's institutions. Through them many were smuggled to safety in
England where Freemasonry was just beginning to coalesce. In some significant sense
Andrea's Christian Unions may have contributed to the organisation of the Masonic lodge
system.
Among the displaced Europeans finding their way to England were a
number of
Andrea's personal associates: Samuel Hartlib, for example; Adam
Komensky, better known as Comenius, with whom Andrea maintained a
continuing correspondence; Theodore Haak, who was also a personal
friend of Elizabeth
Stuart and maintained a correspondence with her; and Doctor John Wilkins, formerly
personal chaplain to Frederick of the Palatinate and subsequently bishop of Chester.
Once in England, these men became closely associated with Masonic circles.
They were intimate with Robert Moray, for instance, whose induction
into a
Masonic lodge in 1 641 is one of the earliest on record; with Elias
Ashmole, antiquarian and expert on chivalric orders, who was inducted
in 1646; with the young but precocious Robert Boyle who, though not
himself a
Freemason, was a member of another, more elusive secret society."
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There is no concrete evidence that this secret society was the Prieure
de Sion, but Boyle, according to the "Prieure documents', succeeded
Andrea as Sion's Grand Master.
During Cromwell's Protectorate, these dynamic minds, both English and
European, formed what Boyle in a deliberate echo of the "Rosicrucian' manifestos called
an 'invisible college'. And with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the 'invisible
college' became the Royal Society" with the Stuart ruler, Charles II, as its patron and
sponsor.
Virtually all the
Royal Society's founder members were Freemasons. One could reasonably
argue that the Royal Society itself, at least in its inception, was a
Masonic institution derived, through Andrea's Christian Unions, from
the 'invisible Rosicrucian brotherhood'. But this was not to be the
culmination of the 'underground stream'. On the contrary, it was to
flow from Boyle to
Sir Isaac Newton, listed as Sion's next Grand Master, and thence into the complex
tributaries of eighteenth-century Freemasonry.
The Stuart Dynasty
According to the "Prieure documents', Newton was succeeded as Sion's
Grand
Master by Charles Radclyffe. The name was hardly as resonant to us
as
Newton's or Boyle's or even Andrea's. Indeed, we were not at first certain who Charles
Radclyffe was. As we began to research into him, however, he emerged as a figure of
considerable, if subterranean, consequence in eighteenth-century cultural history.
Since the sixteenth century the Radclyffes had been an influential
Northumbrian family. In 1688, shortly before he was deposed, James II
had created them earls of Derwentwater. Charles Radclyffe himself was
born in 1693. His mother was an illegitimate daughter of Charles II by
his mistress, Moll Davies. Radclyffe was thus, on his mother's side,
of royal blood a grandson of the next-to last Stuart monarch. He was a
cousin of
Bonnie Prince Charlie and of George Lee, Earl of Lichfield another illegitimate grandson of
Charles II. Not surprisingly, therefore, Radclyffe devoted much of his life to the Stuart
cause.
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In 1715 this cause rested with the "Old Pretender', James III, then in
exile and residing at Bar-leDuc, under the special protection of duke
of Lorraine. Radclyffe and his elder brother, James, both participated
in the Scottish rebellion of that year. Both were captured and
imprisoned, and James was executed. Charles, in the meantime,
apparently aided by the earl of Lichfield, made a dashing and
unprecedented escape from
Newgate prison, and found refuge in the Jacobite ranks in France. In
the years that followed he became personal secretary to the "Young
Pretender',
Bonnie Prince Charlie.
In 1745 the latter landed in Scotland and embarked on his quixotic
attempt to reinstate the Stuarts on the British throne. In the same
year Radclyffe, en route to join him, was captured in a French ship off
the Dogger Bank. A year later, in 1746, the "Young Pretender' was
disastrously defeated at the
Battle of Culloden Moor. A few months thereafter, Charles Radclyffe died beneath the
headsman's axe at the Tower of London.
During their stay in France the Stuarts had been deeply involved in the
dissemination of Freemasonry. Indeed they are generally regarded as
the source of the particular form of Freemasonry known as "Scottish
Rite'. "Scottish Rite' Freemasonry introduced higher degrees than
those offered by other Masonic systems at the time. It promised
initiation into greater and more profound mysteries -mysteries
supposedly preserved and handed down in
Scotland. It established more direct connections between Freemasonry and the various
activities alchemy, Cabalism and Hermetic thought, for instance which were regarded as
"Rosicrucian'. And it elaborated not only on the antiquity but also on the illustrious
pedigree of the 'craft'.
It is probable that "Scottish Rite' Freemasonry was originally
promulgated, if not indeed devised, by Charles Radclyffe. In any case
Radclyffe, in 1725, is said to have founded the first Masonic lodge on
the continent, in
Paris. During the same year, or perhaps in the year following, he seems to have been
acknowledged Grand Master of all French lodges, and it is still cited as such a decade
later, in 1736. The dissemination of eighteenth-century Freemasonry owes more,
ultimately, to Radclyffe than to any other man.
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This has not always been readily apparent because Radclyffe,
especially after 1738, kept a relatively 'low profile'. To a very significant degree, he seems
to have worked through intermediaries and 'mouthpieces'. The most important of these,
and the most famous, was the enigmatic individual known as the Chevalier Andrew
Ramsay."
Ramsay was born in Scotland sometime during the 1680s. As a young man
he was a member of a quasi Masonic quasi-"Rosicrucian' society called
the
Philadelphians. Among the other members of this society were at least two close friends
of Isaac Newton. Ramsay himself regarded Newton with unmitigated reverence, deeming
him a kind of high mystical 'initiate' - a man who had rediscovered and reconstructed the
eternal truths concealed in the ancient mysteries.
Ramsay had other links with Newton. He was associated with jean
Desaguliers, one of Newton's closest friends. In 1707 he studied
mathematics under one Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, the most intimate of
all
Newton's companions. Like Newton, he displayed a sympathetic interest in the
Camisards - a sect of Cathar-like heretics then suffering persecution in southern France,
and a kind of cause celebre for Fatio de Duillier.
By 1710 Ramsay was in Cambrai and on intimate terms with the mystical philosopher
Fenelon, formerly cure of Saint Sulpice which, even at that time, was a bastion of rather
questionable orthodoxy. It is not known precisely when Ramsay made Charles
Radclyffe's acquaintance, but by the 1720s he was closely affiliated with the Jacobite
cause. For a time he even served as Bonnie Prince Charlie's tutor.
Despite his Jacobite connections, Ramsay returned to England in 1729 where
notwithstanding an apparent lack of appropriate qualifications he was promptly admitted to
the Royal Society. He also became a member of a rather more obscure institution called
the Gentleman's Club of Spalding. This 'club' included men like Desaguliers, Alexander
Pope and, until his death in 1727, Isaac Newton.
By 1730 Ramsay was back in France and increasingly active on behalf
of
Freemasonry. He is on record as having attended lodge meetings with a
number of notable figures, including Desaguliers. And he received
139
special patronage from the Tour dAuvergne family, the viscounts of
Turenne and dukes of
Bouillon who, three-quarters of a century before, had been related to
Frederick of the Palatinate. In Ramsay's time the duke of Bouillon was
a cousin of Bonnie Prince Charlie and among the most prominent figures
in
Freemasonry. He conferred an estate and a town-house on Ramsay, whom he also
appointed tutor to his son.
In 1737 Ramsay delivered his famous "Oration' - a lengthy disquisition
on the history of Freemasonry, which subsequently became a seminal
document for the 'craft' ."4 On the basis of this "Oration' Ramsay
became the preeminent Masonic spokesman of his age. Our research
convinced us, however, that the real voice behind Ramsay was that of
Charles Radclyffe who presided over the lodge at which Ramsay delivered
his discourse and who appeared again, in 1743, as chief signatory at
Ramsay's funeral. But if
Radclyffe was the power behind Ramsay, it would seem to have been Ramsay who
constituted the link between Radclyffe and Newton.
Despite Radclyffe's premature death in 1746, the seeds he had sown in
Europe continued to bear fruit. Early in the 1750s a new ambassador
of
Freemasonry appeared a German named Karl Gottlieb von Hund. Hund
claimed to have been initiated in 1742 - a year before Ramsay's death,
four years before Radclyffe's. At his initiation, he claimed, he had
been introduced to a new system of Freemasonry, confided to him by
'unknown superiors'. "5
These 'unknown superiors', Hund maintained, were closely associated with the Jacobite
cause. Indeed, he even believed at first that the man who presided over his initiation was
Bonnie Prince Charlie. And although this proved not to be the case, Hund remained
convinced that the unidentified personage in question was intimately connected with the
"Young Pretender'.
It seems reasonable to suppose that the man who actually presided was
Charles Radclyffe.
The system of Freemasonry to which Hund was introduced a further
extension of the "Scottish Rite'was subsequently called "Strict
Observance'. Its name derived from the oath it demanded, an oath of unswerving,
unquestioning obedience to the mysterious 'unknown superiors'.
140
And the basic tenet of the "Strict Observance' was that it had
descended directly from the Knights Templar, some of whom had
purportedly survived the purge of 1307-14 and perpetuated their Order
in
Scotland.
We were already familiar with this claim. On the basis of our own research we could allow
it some truth. A contingent of Templars had allegedly fought on Robert Bruce's side at the
Battle of Bannockburn.
Because the Papal Bull dissolving the Templars was never promulgated in
Scotland, the Order was never officially suppressed there. And we
ourselves had located what seemed to be a Templar graveyard in
Argyllshire. The earliest of the stones in this graveyard dated from
the thirteenth century, the later ones from the eighteenth. The
earlier stones bore certain unique carvings and incised symbols
identical to those found at known Templar preceptories in England and
France. The later stones combined these symbols with specifically
Masonic motifs, attesting thereby to some sort of fusion. It was thus
not impossible, we concluded, that the Order had indeed perpetuated
itself in the trackless wilderness of medieval Argyll -maintaining a
clandestine existence, gradually secular ising itself and becoming
associated with both
Masonic guilds and the prevailing clan system.
The pedigree Hund claimed for the "Strict Observance' did not,
therefore, seem to us altogether improbable. To his own embarrassment
and subsequent disgrace, however, he was unable to elaborate further on
his new system of
Freemasonry. As a result his contemporaries dismissed him as a
charlatan, and accused him of having fabricated the story of his
initiation, his meeting with 'unknown superiors', his mandate to
disseminate the "Strict
Observance'. To these charges Hund could only reply that his 'unknown superiors' had
inexplicably abandoned him. They had promised to contact him again and give him
further instructions, he protested, but they had never done so. To the end of his life he
affirmed his integrity, maintaining he had been deserted by his original sponsors who, he
insisted, had actually existed.
The more we considered Hund's assertions, the more plausible they
sounded and he appeared to have been a hapless victim not so much of
deliberate betrayal as of circumstances beyond everyone's control. For
141
according to his own account, Hund had been initiated in 1742, when
the Jacobites were still a powerful political force in continental
affairs. By 1746, however,
Radclyffe was dead. So were many of his colleagues, while others were in prison or exile
as far away, in some cases, as North America. If Hund's 'unknown superiors' failed to
reestablish contact with their protege, the omission does not seem to have been voluntary.
The fact that Hund was abandoned immediately after the collapse of the Jacobite cause
would seem, if anything, to confirm his story.
There is another fragment of evidence which lends credence not only
to
Hund's claims but to the "Prieure documents' as well. This evidence is
a list of Grand Masters of the Knights Templar, which Hund insisted he
had obtained from his 'unknown superiors'. '6 On the basis of our own
research, we had concluded that the list of Templar Grand Masters in
the Dossiers secrets was accurate so accurate, in fact, that it
appeared to derive from 'inside information'. Save for the spelling of
a single surname, the list Hund produced agreed with the one in the
Dossiers secret. In shot,
Hund had somehow obtained a list of Templar Grand Masters more accurate than any
other known at the time. Moreover, he obtained it when many documents on which we
relied charters, deeds, proclamations were still sequestered in the Vatican and
unobtainable. This would seem to confirm that Hund's story of 'unknown superiors' was
not a fabrication. It would also seem to indicate that those 'unknown superiors' were
extraordinarily knowledgeable about the Order of the Temple more knowledgeable than
they could possibly have been without access to 'privileged sources'.
In any case, despite the charges levelled against him Hund was not left
completely friendless. After the collapse of the Jacobite cause he
found a sympathetic patron, and a close companion, in no less a person
than the
Holy Roman Emperor. The Holy Roman Emperor at this time was FranQois,
Duke of Lorraine who, by his marriage to Maria Theresa of Austria in
1735, had linked the houses of Habsburg and Lorraine and inaugurated
the
Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty. And according to the "Prieure documents',
it was
142
Francois's brother, Charles de Lorraine, who succeeded Radclyffe as
Sion's Grand Master.
Fran(~ois was the first European prince to become a Mason and to
publicise his Masonic affiliations. He was initiated in 1731 at the
Hague a bastion of esoteric activity since "Rosicrucian' circles had
installed themselves there during the Thirty Years War. And the man
who presided over Francois's initiation was jean Desaguliers, intimate
associate of Newton, Ramsay and
Radclyffe. Shortly after his initiation moreover, Franqois embarked for a lengthy stay in
England. Here he became a member of that innocuous-sounding institution, the
Gentleman's Club of Spalding.
In the years that followed, Franqois de Lorraine was probably more
responsible than any other European potentate for the spread of
Freemasonry. His court at Vienna became, in a sense, Europe's Masonic
capital, and a centre for a broad spectrum of other esoteric interests
as well. FranQois himself was a practising alchemist, with an
alchemical laboratory in the imperial palace, the Hofburg. On the
death of the last
Medici he became grand duke of Tuscany, and deftly thwarted the
Inquisition's harassment of Freemasons in Florence. Through
Franqois,
Charles Radclyffe, who had founded the first Masonic lodge on the continent, left a
durable legacy.
Charles Nodier and His Circle
Compared to the important cultural and political figures who preceded him, compared
even to a man like Charles Radclyffe, Charles Nodier seemed a most unlikely choice for
Grand Master. We knew him primarily as a kind of literary curiosity a relatively minor
belle-lettrist, a somewhat garrulous essayist, a second-rate novelist and short-story writer
in the bizarre tradition of E. T. A. Hoffmann and, later, Edgar Allan Poe. In his own time,
however, Nodier was regarded as a major cultural figure, and his influence was enormous.
Moreover, he proved to be connected with our inquiry in a number of surprising ways.
By 1824 Nodier was already a literary celebrity. In that year he was
143
appointed the chief librarian at the Arsenal Library, the major French
depository for medieval and specifically occult manuscripts. Among its various treasures
the Arsenal was said to have contained the alchemical works of Nicolas Flamel the
medieval alchemist listed as one of Sion's earlier Grand Masters. The Arsenal also
contained the library of Cardinal Richelieu an exhaustive collection of works on magical,
Cabalistic and Hermetic thought. And there were other treasures, too. On the outbreak of
the French Revolution monasteries throughout the country had been plundered, and all
books and manuscripts sent to Paris for storage. Then in 1810 Napoleon, as part of his
ambition to create a definitive world library, confiscated and brought to Paris almost the
entire archive of the Vatican. There were more than three thousand cases of material,
some of which all the documents pertaining to the Templars, for example -had been
specifically requested. Although some of these papers were subsequently returned to
Rome, a great many remained in France. And it was material of this sort -occult books
and manuscripts, works plundered from monasteries and the archive of the Vatican that
passed through the hands of Nodier and his associates. Methodically they sifted it,
catalogued it, explored it.
Among Nodier's colleagues in this task were Eliphas Levi and Jean
Baptiste
Pitois, who adopted the nom de plume of Paul Christian. The works of these two men,
over the years that followed, engendered a major renaissance of interest in esoterica. It is
to these two men, and to Charles Nodier, their mentor, that the French "occult revival' of
the nineteenth century, as it has been called, can ultimately be traced.
Indeed, Pitois's History and
Practice of Magic became a bible for nineteenth-century students of the arcane. Recently
re-issued in English translation complete with its original dedication to Nodier it is now a
coveted work among modern students of the occult.
During his tenure at the Arsenal Nodier continued to write and publish prolifically. Among
the most important of his later works is a massive, lavishly illustrated, multi-volume opus
of antiquarian interest, devoted to sites of particular consequence in ancient France.
In this monumental compendium Nodier devoted considerable space to the
144
Merovingian epoch a fact all the more striking in that no one at the
time displayed the least interest in the
Merovingians. There are also lengthy sections on the Templars, and there is a special
article on Gisors including a detailed account of the mysterious 'cutting of the elm' in 1 188,
which, according to the "Prieure documents', marked the separation between the Knights
Templar and the Prieure de Sion."
At the same time Nodier was more than a librarian and a writer. He was
also a gregarious, egocentric and flamboyant individual who constantly
sought the centre of attention and did not hesitate to exaggerate his
own importance. In his quarters at the Arsenal Library he inaugurated
a salon which established him as one of the most influential and
prestigious 'aesthetic potentates' of the epoch. By the time of his
death in 1 845, he had served as mentor for a whole generation many of
whom quite eclipsed him in their subsequent achievements. For example,
Nodier's chief disciple and closest friend was the young Victor Hugo
Sion's next Grand Master according to the "Prieure documents'. There
was Franqois-Rene de
Chateaubriand who made a special pilgrimage to Poussin's tomb in Rome
and had a stone erected there bearing a reproduction of "Les Bergers
d'Arcadie'. There were Balzac, Delacroix, Dumas pere, Lamartine,
Musset,
Theophile Gautier, Gerard de Nerval and Alfred de Vigny. Like the
poets and painters of the Renaissance, these men often drew heavily on
esoteric, and especially Hermetic, tradition. They also incorporated
in their works a number of motifs, themes, references and allusions to
the mystery which, for us, commenced with Sauniere and
Rennes-leChateau. In 1832, for instance, a book was published entitled
A Journey to Rennes-les-Bains, which speaks at length of a legendary
treasure associated with Blanchefort and Rennes-leChateau. The author
of this obscure book, Auguste de
Laboulsse-Rochefort, also produced another work, The Lovers To Eleonore.
On the title page there appears, without any explanation, the motto "Et
in
Arcadia Ego'.
Nodier's literary and esoteric activities were quite clearly pertinent
to our investigation. But there was another aspect of his career which
was, if anything, more pertinent still. For Nodier, from his
childhood, was deeply involved in secret societies. As early as 1790,
145
for instance, at the age of ten he is known to have been involved in a
group called the
Philadelphes."8 Around 1793 he created another group or perhaps an
inner circle of the first -which included one of the subsequent
plotters against
Napoleon. A charter dated 1797 attests to the foundation of yet
another group also called the Philadelphes in that year. "9 In the
library of
Besani~on there is a cryptic essay composed and recited to this group
by one of Nodier's closest friends. It is entitled Le Berger Arcadien
ou Premiere
Accents dune Flute Champetre ("The Arcadian Shepherd Sounds the First
Accents of a Rustic Flute'). z
In Paris in 1802 Nodier wrote of his affiliation with a secret society
which he described as "Biblical and Pythagorean'." Then, in 1816, he
published anonymously one of his most curious and influential works,
A
History of Secret Societies in the Army under Napoleon. In this book Nodier is
deliberately ambiguous. He does not clarify definitively whether he is writing pure fiction
or pure fact. If anything, he implies, the book is a species of thinly disguised allegory of
actual historical occurrences. In any case it develops a comprehensive philosophy of
secret societies. And it credits such societies with a number of historical
accomplishments, including the downfall of Napoleon. There are a great many secret
societies in operation, Nodier declares. But there is one, he adds, that takes precedence
over all others, that in fact presides over all the others.
According to Nodier, this 'supreme' secret society is called the
Philadelphes. At the same time, however, he speaks of "the oath which
binds me to the Philadelphes and which forbids me to make them known
under their social name '.21 Nevertheless, there is a hint of Sion in
an address which
Nodier quotes. It was supposedly made to an assembly of Philadelphes by one of the
plotters against Napoleon. The man in question is speaking of his newly born son:
He is too young to engage himself to you by the oath of Annibal; but
remember I have named him Eliacin, and that I delegate to him the guard
of the temple and the altar, if I should die ere I have seen fall from
his throne the last of the oppressors of Jerusalem .z3
Nodier's book burst on the scene when fear of secret societies had
146
assumed virtually pathological proportions. Such societies were often
blamed for instigating the French
Revolution; and the atmosphere of post-Napoleonic Europe was similar, in many respects,
to that of the "McCarthy Era' in the United States during the 1950s. People saw, or
imagined they saw, conspiracies everywhere.
Witch-hunts abounded. Every public disturbance, every minor disruption, every untoward
occurrence was attributed to 'subversive activity' to the work of highly organised
clandestine organisations working insidiously behind the scenes, eroding the fabric of
established institutions, perpetrating all manner of devious sabotage.
This mentality engendered measures of extreme repression. And the
repression, directed often at a fictitious threat, in turn engendered
real opponents, real groups of subversive conspirators who would form
themselves in accordance with the fictitious blueprints. Even as
figments of the imagination, secret societies fostered a pervasive
paranoia in the upper echelons of government; and this paranoia
frequently accomplished more than any secret society itself could
possibly have done. There is no question that the myth of the secret
society, if not the secret society itself, played a major role in
nineteenth century European history. And one of the chief architects
of that myth, and possibly of a reality behind it, was Charles
Nodier.z4
Debussy and the Rose-Croix
The trends to which Nodier gave expression a fascination with secret
societies and a renewed interest in the esoteric continued to gain
influence and adherents throughout the nineteenth century. Both trends
reached a peak in the Paris of the fin de siecle the milieu of Claude
Debussy, Sion's alleged Grand Master when Berenger Sauniere, in 1 891 , discovered the
mysterious parchments at Rennes-leChateau.
Debussy seems to have made Victor Hugo's acquaintance through the symbolist poet
Paul Verlaine. Subsequently he set a number of Hugo's works to music.
He also became an integral member of the symbolist circles which, by the last decade of
the century, had come to dominate Parisian cultural life.
147
These circles were sometimes illustrious, sometimes odd, sometimes
both. They included the young cleric Rmile Hoffet and Emma Calve
through whom Debussy came to meet
Sauniere. There was also the enigmatic magus of French symbolist
poetry,
Stephane Mallarme one of whose masterpieces, L'Apres-Midi dun Faune,
Debussy set to music. There was the symbolist playwright, Maurice
Maeterlinck, whose Merovingian drama, Pelleas et Melisande, Debussy
turned into a world-famous opera. There was the flamboyant Comte
Philippe Auguste
Villiers de 1 "Isle-Adam, whose "Rosicrucian' play, Axel, became a bible for the entire
Symbolist Movement. Although his death in 1918 prevented its completion, Debussy
began to compose a libretto for Villiers's occult drama, intending to turn it, too, into an
opera.
Among his other associates were the luminaries who attended Mallarme's
famous Tuesday night soirees Oscar
Wilde, W. B. Yeats, Stefan George, Paul Valery, the young Andre Gide
and
Marcel Proust.
In themselves Debussy's and Mallarme circles were steeped in esoterica.
At the same time, they overlapped circles that were more esoteric
still. Thus
Debussy consorted with virtually all the most prominent names in the
so-called French 'occult revival'. One of these was the Marquis
Stanislas de Guaita, an intimate of Emma Calve and founder of the
so-called
Cabalistic Order of the Rose Croix A second was Jules Bois, a notorious satanist, another
intimate of Emma Calve and a friend of MacGregor Mathers.
Prompted by Jules Bois, Mathers established the most famous British occult society of the
period, the Order of the Golden Dawn.
Another occultist of Debussy's acquaintance was Doctor Gerard Encausse better known
as Papus,zs under which name he published what is still considered one of the definitive
works on the Tarot. Papus was not only a member of numerous esoteric orders and
societies, but also a confidant of the czar and czarina, Nicholas and Alexandra of Russia.
And among Papus's closest associates was a name which had already
figured in our inquiry that of Jules Doinel. In 1890 Doinel had become
librarian at Carcassonne and established a neo-Cathar church in the
Languedoc in which he and
Papus functioned as bishops. Doinel in fact proclaimed himself Gnostic
148
bishop of Mirepoix, which included the parish of Montsegur, and of
Met, which included the parish of Rennes- leChateau.
Doinel's church was supposedly consecrated by an eastern bishop in
Paris at the home, interestingly enough, of Lady Caithness, wife of the
earl of
Caithness, Lord James Sinclair. In retrospect this church seems to have been merely
another innocuous sect or cult, like so many of the fin de siecle. At the time, however, it
caused considerable alarm in official quarters. A special report was prepared for the Holy
Office of the Vatican on the "resurgence of Cathar tendencies'. And the pope issued and
explicit condemnation of Doinel's institution, which he militantly denounced as a new
manifestation of 'the ancient Albigensian heresy'.
Notwithstanding the Vatican's condemnation, Doinel, by the mid-1 890s,
was active in Sauniere's home territory and at precisely the time that
the cure of Rennes-leChateau began to flaunt his wealth. The two men
may well have been introduced by Debussy. Or by Emma Calve. Or by the
Abbe Henri
Boudet cure of Rennes-les-Bains, best friend of Sauniere and colleague
of
Doinel in the Society of Arts and Sciences of Carcassonne.
One of the closest of Debussy's occult contacts was Josephin Peladan
another friend of Papus and, predictably enough, another intimate of
Emma
Calve. In 1889 Peladan embarked on a visit to the Holy Land. When he
returned he claimed to have discovered Jesus's tomb not at the
traditional site of the Holy Sepulchre but under the Mosque of Omar,
formerly part of the Templars' enclave. In the words of an
enthusiastic admirer, Pdadan's alleged discovery was 'so astonishing
that at any other era it would have shaken the Catholic world to its
foundations'. ze Neither
Peladan nor his associates, however, volunteered any indication of
how
Jesus's tomb could have been so definitively identified and verified as such, nor why its
discovery should necessarily shake the Catholic world unless, of course, it contained
something significant, controversial, perhaps even explosive. In any case, Peladan did
not elaborate on his purported discovery. But though a self-professed Catholic, he
nevertheless insisted on Jesus's mortality.
In 1890 Peladan founded a new order the Order of the Catholic
149
Rose-Croix, the Temple and the Grail. And this order, unlike the
other Rose-Croix institutions of the period, somehow escaped papal condemnation. In the
meantime, P61adan turned his attention increasingly to the arts. The artist, he declared,
should be 'a knight in armour, eagerly engaged in the symbolic quest for the Holy Grail'.
And in adherence to this principle, P61adan embarked on a fully fledged
aesthetic crusade. It took the form of a highly publici sed series of
annual exhibitions, known as the Salon de la Rose + Croix whose avowed
purpose was 'to ruin realism, reform Latin taste and create a school of
idealist art'. To that end certain themes and subjects were
autocratically and summarily rejected as unworthy 'no matter how well
executed, even if perfectly'. The list of rejected themes and subjects
included 'prosaic' history painting, patriotic and military painting,
representations of contemporary life, portraits, rustic scenes and 'alt
landscapes except those composed in the manner of Poussin'.2'
Nor did P61adan confine himself to painting. On the contrary, he attempted to promulgate
his aesthetic in music and the theatre as well. He formed his own theatre company, which
performed specially composed works on such subjects as Orpheus, the Argonauts and
the Quest for the Golden Fleece, the "Mystery of the Rose-Croix' and the "Mystery of the
Grail'. One of the regular promoters and patrons of these productions was Claude
Debussy.
Among Peladan's and Debussy's other associates was Maurice Barres who, as a young
man, had been involved in a "Rose-Croix' circle with Victor Hugo.
In 1912 Barres published his most famous novel, La Colline inspiree
("The
Inspired Mount'). Certain modern commentators have suggested that his
work is in fact a thinly disguised allegory of Berenger Sauniere and
Rennes-leChateau. Certainly there are parallels which would seem too striking to be
wholly coincidental. But Barres does not situate his narrative in Rennes-leChateau, or any
other place in the Languedoc. On the contrary, the 'inspired mount' of the title is a
mountain surmounted by a village in Lorraine, And the village is the old pilgrimage centre
of Sion.
Jean Cocteau
150
More than Charles Radclyffe, more than Charles Nodier, Jean Cocteau
seemed to us a most unlikely candidate for the Grand Mastership of an influential secret
society. In Radclyffe's and Nodier's cases, however, our investigation had yielded certain
connections of considerable interest. In Cocteau's we discovered very few.
Certainly he was raised in a milieu close to the "corridors of power' his family were
politically prominent and his uncle was an important diplomat.
But Cocteau, at least ostensibly, abandoned this world, leaving home at the age of fifteen
and plunging into the seedy sub-culture of Marseilles. By 1908 he had established himself
in bohemian artistic circles. In his early twenties he became associated with Proust, Gide
and Maurice Barres. He was also a close friend of Victor Hugo's great-grandson, jean,
with whom he embarked on assorted excursions into spiritualism and the occult. He
quickly became versed in esoterica; and Hermetic thinking shaped not only much of his
work, but also his entire aesthetic. By 1 91 2, if not earlier, he had begun to consort with
Debussy, to whom he alludes frequently, if noncommittally in his journals. In 1926 he
designed the set for a production of the opera Pelleas et Melisande because, according
to one commentator, he was "unable to resist linking his name for all time to that of Claude
Debussy'.
Cocteau's private life which included bouts of drug addiction and a
sequence of homosexual affairs was notoriously erratic. This has
fostered an image of him as a volatile and recklessly irresponsible
individual. In fact, however, he was always acutely conscious of his
public persona; and whatever his personal escapades, he would not let
them impede his access to people of influence and power. As he himself
admitted, he had always craved public recognition, honour, esteem, even
admission to the Academie
Franqaise. And he made a point of conforming sufficiently to assure
him of the status he sought. Thus he was never far removed from
prominent figures like Jacques Maritain and Andre Malraux. Although
never ostensibly interested in politics, he denounced the Vichy
government during the war and seems to have been quietly in league with
the Resistance. In 1949 he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of
151
Honour. In 1958 he was invited by de Gaulle's brother to make a
public address on the general subject of
France. It is not the kind of role one generally attributes to Cocteau, but he appears to
have played it frequently enough and to have relished doing so.
For a good part of his life, Cocteau was associated -sometimes intimately, sometimes
peripherally with royalist Catholic circles. Here he frequently hobnobbed with members of
the old aristocracy including some of Proust's friends and patrons. At the same time,
however, Cocteau's Catholicism was highly suspect, highly unorthodox, and seems to
have been more an aesthetic than a religious commitment.
In the latter part of his life, he devoted much of his energy to
redecorating churches -curious echo, perhaps, of
Berenger Sauniere. Yet even then his piety was questionable: "They take me for a
religious painter because I've decorated a chapel.
Always the same mania for labelling people. "a
Like Sauniere, Cocteau, in his redecorations, incorporated certain
curious and suggestive details. Some are visible in the church of
Notre Dame de
France, around the corner from Leicester Square in London. The church
itself dates from 1865 and may, at its consecration, have had certain
Masonic connections. In 1 940, at the peak of the blitz, it was
seriously damaged. Nevertheless, it remained the favourite centre of
worship for many important members of the Free French Forces; and after
the war it was restored and redecorated by artists from all over
France. Among them was
Cocteau, who, in 1960, three years before his death, executed a mural depicting the
Crucifixion. It is an extremely singular Crucifixion. There is a black sun, and a sinister,
green-tinged and unidentified figure in the lower right-hand corner. There is a Roman
soldier holding a shield with a bird emblazoned on it a highly styli sed bird suggesting an
Egyptian rendering of Horus. Among the mourning women and dice-throwing centurions,
there are two incongruously modern figures -one of whom is Cocteau himself, presented
as a self portrait with his back significantly turned on the cross. Most striking of all is the
fact that the mural depicts only the lower portion of the cross.
Whoever hangs upon it is visible only as far up as the knees so that
one cannot see the face, or determine the identity of who is being
152
crucified. And fixed to the cross, immediately below the anonymous
victim's feet, is a gigantic rose. The design, in short, is a flagrant Rose-Croix device. And
if nothing else, it is a very singular motif for a Catholic church.
The Two John XXH Is
The Dossiers secrets, in which the list of Sion's alleged Grand Masters
appeared, were dated 1956. Cocteau did not die until 1963. There was
thus no indication of who might have succeeded him, or of who might
preside over the
Prieure de Sion at present. But Cocteau himself posed one additional point of immense
interest.
Until the 'cutting of the elm' in 1 188, the "Prieure documents'
asserted,
Sion and the Order of the Temple shared the same Grand Master. After
1188
Sion is said to have chosen a Grand Master of its own, the first of
them being jean de Gisors. According to the "Prieure documents', every
Grand
Master, on assuming his position, has adopted the name of jean (John)
or, since there were four women, Jeanne (Joan). Sion's Grand Masters
are therefore alleged to have comprised a continuous succession of
jeans and
Jeannes, from 1 188 to the present. This succession was clearly intended to imply an
esoteric and Hermetic papacy based on John, in contrast (and perhaps opposition) to the
exoteric one based on Peter.
One major question, of course, was which John. John the Baptist? John
the
Evangelist the "Beloved Disciple' in the Fourth Gospel? Or John the
Divine, author of the Book of Revelation? It seemed it must be one of
these three because jean de Gisors in 1 1 88 had purportedly taken the
title of
Jean II. Who, then, was jean I?
Whatever the answer to that question, jean Cocteau appeared on the list
of
Sion's alleged Grand Masters as jean XXIII. In 1 959, while Cocteau
still presumably held the Grand Mastership, Pope Pius XII died and the
assembled cardinals elected, as their new pontiff, Cardinal Angelo
Roncalli of
Venice. Any newly elected pope chooses his own name; and Cardinal Roncalli caused
considerable consternation when he chose the name of John XXIII.
Such consternation was not unjustified. In the first place the name
153
"John' had been implicitly anathematised since it was last used in the
early fifteenth century by an antipope. Moreover, there had already been a John XXIII.
The antipope who abdicated in 1415 and who, interestingly enough, had previously been
bishop of Met was in fact John XXIII. It was thus unusual, to say the least, for Cardinal
Roncalli to assume the same name.
In 1976 an enigmatic little book was published in Italy and soon after translated into
French. It was called The Prophecies o f Pope John XXIII and contained a compilation of
obscure prophetic prose poems reputedly composed by the pontiff who had died thirteen
years before in 1963, the same year as Cocteau. For the most part these 'prophecies' are
extremely opaque and defy any coherent interpretation. Whether they are indeed the
work of John XXIII is also open to question. But the introduction to the work maintains
that they are Pope John's work.
And it maintains something further as well that John XXIII was secretly
a member of the "Rose-Croix', with whom he had become affiliated while
acting as Papal
Nuncio to Turkey in 1935.
Needless to say, this assertion sounds increflible. Certainly it cannot be proved, and we
found no external evidence to support it. But why, we wondered, should such an
assertion even have been made in the first place?
Could it be true after all? Could there be at least a grain of truth in it?
In 1 188 the Prieure de Sion is said to have adopted the subtitle of
"Rose-Croix Veritas'. If Pope John was affiliated with a "Rose-Croix'
organisation, and if that organisation was the Prieure de Sion, the
implications would be extremely intriguing. Among other things they
would suggest that Cardinal Roncalli, on becoming pope, chose the name
of his own seci,et Grand Master so that, for some symbolic reason,
there would be a
John XXIII presiding over Sion and the papacy simultaneously.
In any case the simultaneous rule of a John (or jean) XXIII over both
Sion and Rome would seem to be an extraordinary coincidence. Nor could
the "Prieure documents' have devised a list to create such a
coincidence a list which culminated with jean XXIII at the same time
that a man with that title occupied the throne of Saint Peter. For the
list of Sion's alleged
154
Grand Masters had been composed and deposited in the Bibliotheque
Nationale no later than 1956 three years before John XXIII became pope.
There was another striking coincidence: In the twelfth century an Irish monk named
Malachi compiled a series of Nostradamus-like prophecies.
In these prophecies -which, incidentally, are said to be highly
esteemed by many important Roman Catholics, including the present pope,
John-Paul II Malachai enumerates the pontiffs who will occupy the
throne of Saint Peter in the centuries to come. For each pontiff he
offers a species of descriptive motto. And for John XXIII the motto,
translated into French, is "Pasteur et Nautonnier' - "Shepherd and
Navigator'." The official title of
Sion's alleged Grand Master is also "Nautonnier'.
Whatever the truth underlying these strange coincidences, there is no
question that more than any other man Pope John XXIII was responsible
for re-orienting the Roman Catholic Church and bringing it, as
commentators have frequently said, into the twentieth century. Much of
this was accomplished by the reforms of the Second Vatican Council,
which John inaugurated. At the same time, however, John was
responsible for other changes as well. He revised the Church's
position on Freemasonry, for example breaking with at least two
centuries of entrenched tradition and pronouncing that a Catholic might
be a Freemason. And in June 1960 he issued a profoundly important
apostolic letter .3 This missive addressed itself specifically to the
subject of "The Precious Blood of Jesus'. It ascribed a hitherto
unprecedented significance to that blood. It emphasised
Jesus's suffering as a human being, and maintained that the redemption
of mankind had been effected by the shedding of his blood. In the
context of
Pope John's letter, Jesus's human Passion, and the shedding of his blood, assume a
greater consequence than the Resurrection or even than the mechanics of the Crucifixion.
The implications of this letter are ultimately enormous. As one
commentator has observed, they alter the whole basis of Christian
belief. If man's redemption was achieved by the shedding of Jesus's
blood, his death and resurrection became incidental if not, indeed,
155
superfluous. Jesus need not have died on the cross for the faith to
156
retain its validity. 7 Conspiracy through the Centuries
How were we to synthesise the evidence we had accumulated? Much of it
was impressive and seemed to bear witness to something some pattern,
some coherent design. The list of Sion's alleged Grand Masters,
however improbable it had originally appeared, now displayed some
intriguing consistencies. Most of the figures on the list, for
example, were connected, either by blood or personal association, with
the families whose genealogies figured in the "Prieurcl documents' and
particularly with the house of
Lorraine. Most of the figures on the list were involved with orders of one kind or another,
or with secret societies. Virtually all the figures on the list, even when nominally Catholic,
held unorthodox religious beliefs.
Virtually all of them were immersed in esoteric thought and tradition. And in almost every
case there had been some species of close contact between an alleged Grand Master, his
predecessor and his successor.
Nevertheless, these consistencies, impressive though they might be, did
not necessarily prove anything. They did not prove, for instance, that
the
Prieure de Sion, whose existence during the Middle Ages we had
confirmed, had actually continued to survive through the subsequent
centuries. Still less did they prove that the individuals cited as
Grand Masters actually held that position. It still seemed incredible
to us that some of them really did. So far as certain individuals were
concerned, the age at which they allegedly became Grand Master argued
against them. Granted, it was possible that Edouard de Bar might have
been selected Grand Master at the age of five, or Rene d'Anjou at the
age of eight, on the basis of some hereditary principle. But no such
principle seemed to obtain for Robert
Fludd or Charles Nodier, who both supposedly became Grand Master at the age of
twenty-one, or for Debussy, who supposedly did so aged twenty-three.
157
Such individuals would not have had time to 'work their way up through
the ranks', as one might, for example, in Freemasonry. Nor had they even become solidly
established in their own spheres. This anomaly made no apparent sense. Unless one
assumed that Sion's Grand Mastership was often purely symbolic, a ritual position
occupied by a figurehead a figurehead who, perhaps, was not even aware of the status
accorded him.
However, it proved futile to speculate at least on the basis of the
information we possessed. We therefore turned back to history again,
seeking evidence of the Prieure de Sion elsewhere, in quarters other
than the list of alleged Grand Masters. We turned particularly to the
fortunes of the house of Lorraine, and some of the other families cited
in the
"Prieure documents'. We sought to verify other statements made in those documents.
And we sought additional evidence for the work of a secret society, acting more or less
covertly behind the scenes.
If it was indeed genuinely secret, we did not, of course, expect to
find the Prieure de Sion explicitly mentioned by that name. If it had
continued to function through the centuries, it would have done so
under a variety of shifting guises and masks, "fronts' and faqades just
as it purportedly functioned for a time under the name Ormus, which it
discarded. Nor would it have displayed a single obvious and specific
policy, political position or prevailing attitude. Indeed, any such
cohesive and unified stance, even if it could be gleaned, would have
seemed highly suspect. If we were dealing with an organisation which
had survived for some nine centuries, we would have to credit it with
considerable flexibility and adaptability. Its very survival would
have hinged on these qualities; and without them it would have
degenerated into an empty form, as devoid of any real power as, say,
the Yeomen of the Guard. In short, the Prieure de Sion could not have
remained rigid and immutable for the whole of its history. On the
contrary, it would have been compelled to change periodically, modify
itself and its activities, adjust itself and its objectives to the
shifting kaleidoscope of world affairs just as cavalry units during the
last century have been compelled to exchange their horses for tanks and
armoured cars. In its capacity to conform to a given age and exploit
158
and master its technology and resources, Sion would have constituted a
parallel to what seemed its exoteric rival, the
Roman Catholic Church; or perhaps, to cite a deceptively sinister
example, to the organisation known as the Mafia. We did not, of
course, see the
Prieure de Sion as unadulterated villains. But the Mafia at least provided testimony of
how, by adapting itself from age to age, a secret society could exist, and of the kind of
power it could exercise.
The Prieure de Sion in France
According to the "Prieure documents', Sion between 1306 and 1480
possessed nine command eries In 1481when Rene d'Anjou died this number
was supposedly expanded to twenty-seven. The most important are listed
as having been situated at Bourges, Gisors, Jarnac, Mont Saint-Michel,
Montreval,
Paris, Le Puy, Solesmes and Stenay. And, the Dossiers secrets add cryptically, there was
'an arch called Beth-Ania house of Anne situated at Rennes-leChateau'." It is not clear
precisely what this passage means, except that Rennes-leChateau would appear to enjoy
some kind of highly special significance. And surely it cannot be coincidental that
Sauniere, on building his villa, then christened it Villa Bethania.
According to the Dossiers secrets, the commandery at Gisors dated from 1306 and was
situated in the rue de Vienne. From here it supposedly communicated, via an
underground passageway, with the local cemetery and with the subterranean chapel of
Sainte-Catherine located beneath the fortress. In the sixteenth century this chapel, or
perhaps a crypt adjacent to it, is said to have become a depository for the archives of the
Prieure de Sion, housed in thirty coffers.
Early in 1944, when Gisors was occupied by German personnel, a special
military mission was sent from Berlin, with instructions to plan a
series of excavations beneath the fortress. The Allied invasion of
Normandy thwarted any such undertaking; but not long after, a French
workman named
Roger Lhomoy embarked on excavations of his own. In 1946 Lhomoy
announced to the Mayor of Gisors that he had found an underground
159
chapel containing nineteen sarcophagi of stone and thirty coffers of
metal. His petition to excavate further, and make public his
discovery, was delayed almost deliberately, it might seem by a welter
of official red tape. At last, in 1962, Lhomoy commenced his requested
excavations at
Gisors. They were conducted under the auspices of Andre Malraux,
French
Minister of Culture at the time, and were not officially open to the public.
Certainly no coffers or sarcophagi were found. Whether the underground
chapel was found has been debated in the press, as well as in various
books and articles. Lhomoy insisted he did find his way again to the
chapel, but its contents had been removed. Whatever the truth of the
matter, there is mention of the subterranean chapel of Sainte-Catherine
in two old manuscripts, one dated 1696 and the other 1375.1
On this basis, Lhomoy's story at least becomes plausible. So does the assertion that the
subterranean chapel was a depository for Sion's archives. For we, in our own research,
found conclusive proof that the Prieure de Sion continued to exist for at least three
centuries after the Crusades and the dissolution of the Knights Templar. Between the
early fourteenth and early seventeenth centuries, for example, documents pertinent to
Orleans, and to Sion's base there at Saint-Samson, make sporadic references to the
Order. Thus it is on record that in the early sixteenth century members of the Prieure de
Sion at Orleans by flouting their "rule' and "refusing to live in common' incurred the
displeasure of the pope and the king of France. Towards the end of the fifteenth century
the Order was also accused of a number of of fences failing to observe their rule, living
"individually' rather than "in common', being licentious, residing outside the walls of Saint-
Samson, boycotting divine services and neglecting to rebuild the walls of the house, which
had been seriously damaged in 1562. By 1619 the authorities seemed to have lost
patience.
In that year, according to the records, the Prieure de Sion was evicted
from
Saint-Samson and the house was made over to the Jesuit s.3
From 1619 onwards we could find no reference to the Prieure de Sion
not, at any rate, under that name. But if nothing else, we could at
least prove its existence until the seventeenth century. And yet the
proof itself, such as it was, raised a number of crucial questions. In
160
the first place the references we found cast no light whatever on Map
6 The Duchy of Lorraine in the Mid-Sixteenth Century
V- HESSE
LIEGE ~.ll'
~g~WO
GERMAN STATES
::: I 1IKRAIN
FRANCE WURTTEMBERG
FRANC HEv
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Sion's real activities, objectives, interests or possible influence. In the second place these
references, it seemed, bore witness only to something of trifling consequence a curiously
elusive fraternity of monks or religious devotees whose behaviour, though unorthodox and
perhaps clandestine, was of relatively minor import. We could not reconcile the
apparently remiss occupants of Saint Samson with the celebrated and legendary Rose-
Croix, or a band of wayward monks with an institution whose Grand Masters supposedly
comprised some of the most illustrious names in Western history and culture.
According to the "Prieure documents', Sion was an organisation of considerable power
and influence, responsible for creating the Templars and manipulating the course of
international affairs. The references we found suggested nothing of such magnitude.
One possible explanation, of course, was that Saint Samson at Orleans
was but an isolated seat, and probably a minor one, of Sion's
161
activities. And indeed, the list of Sion's important command eries in
the Dossiers secrets does not even include
Orleans. If Sion was in fact a force to be reckoned with, Orleans can only have been one
small fragment of a much broader pattern. And if this were the case, we would have to
look for traces of the Order elsewhere.
The Dukes of Guise and Lorraine
During the sixteenth century the house of Lorraine and its cadet branch, the house of
Guise, made a concerted and determined attempt to topple the Valois dynasty of France
to exterminate the Valois line and claim the French throne. This attempt, on several
occasions, came within a hair's breadth of dazzling success. In the course of some thirty
years all Valois rulers, heirs and princes were wiped out, and the line driven to extinction.
The attempt to seize the French throne extended across three
generations of the Guise and Lorraine families. It came closest to
success in the 1550s and 1560s under the auspices of Charles, Cardinal
of Lorraine and his brother, Francois, Duke of Guise. Charles and
Franqois were related to the
Gonzaga family of Mantua and to Charles de Montpensier, Constable of
Bourbon listed in the Dossiers secrets as Grand Master of Sion until
1527. Moreover, Francois, Duke of Guise, was married to Anne d'Este,
Duchess of Gisors. And in his machinations for the throne he seems to
have received covert aid and support from Ferrante de Gonzaga,
allegedly Grand
Master of Sion from 1527 until 1575.
Both Francois and his brother, the cardinal of Lorraine, have been stigmatised by later
historians as rabidly bigoted and fanatic Catholics, intolerant, brutal and bloodthirsty. But
there is substantial evidence to suggest that this reputation is to some extent unwarranted,
at least so far as adherence to Catholicism is concerned.
Francois and his brother appear, quite patently, to have been brazen,
if cunning, opportunists, courting both Catholics and Protestants in
the name of their ulterior design." In 1562, for example, at the
Council of Trent, the cardinal of Lorraine launched an attempt to
162
decentralise the papacy to confer autonomy on local bishops and 1 The
Dukes of Guise and Lofraine
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164
restore the ecclesiastical hierarchy to what it had been in
Merovingian times.
By 1563 Francois de Guise was already virtually king when he fell to an
assassin's bullet. His brother, the cardinal of Lorraine, died twelve
years later, in 1575. But the vendetta against the French royal line
did not cease. In 1 584 the new duke of Guise and new cardinal of
Lorraine embarked on a fresh assault against the throne. Their chief
ally in this enterprise was Louis de Gonzaga, Duke of Nevers who,
according to the "Prieure documents', had become Grand Master of Sion
nine years before. The banner of the conspirators was the Cross of
Lorraine the former emblem of Rene d'Anjou.s
The feud continued. By the end of the century the Valois were at last extinct. But the
house of Guise had bled itself to death in the process, and could put forward no eligible
candidate for a throne that finally lay within its grasp.
It is simply not known whether there was an organised secret society, or secret order,
supporting the houses of Guise and Lorraine.
Certainly they were aided by an international network of emissaries,
ambassadors, assassins, agents provocateurs, spies and agents who might
well have comprised such a clandestine institution. According to
Gerard de We, one of these agents was Nostradamus; and there are other
"Prieure documents' which echo M. de We's contention. In any case,
there is abundant evidence to suggest that Nostradamus was indeed a
secret agent working for Franqois de
Guise and Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine. s
If Nostradamus was an agent for the houses of Guise and Lorraine, he
would have been responsible not only for providing them with important
information-concerning the activities and plans of their adversaries,
but he would also, in his capacity as astrologer to the French court,
have been privy to all manner of intimate secrets, as well as quirks
and weaknesses of personality. By playing on vulnerabilities with
which he had become acquainted, he could have psychologically
manipulated the Valois into the hands of their enemies. And by virtue
of his familiarity with their horoscopes, he might well have advised
their enemies on, say, an apparently propitious moment for
assassination. Many of Nostradamus's prophecies, in short, may not
165
have been prophecies at all. They may have been cryptic messages,
ciphers, schedules, timetables, instructions, blueprints for action.
Whether this was actually the case or not, there is no question that
some of Nostradamus's prophecies were not prophecies but referred,
quite explicitly, to the past to the Knights Templar, the Merovingian
dynasty, the history of the house of Lorraine. A striking number of
them refer to the Razes the old comte of Rennes-leChateau." And the
numerous quatrains which refer to the advent of 'le Grand Monarch' the
Great Monarch indicate that this sovereign will derive ultimately from
the Languedoc. Our research revealed an additional fragment which
linked Nostradamus even more directly to our investigation. According
to Gerard de Sede,e as well as to popular legend, Nostradamus, before
embarking on his career as prophet, spent considerable time in
Lorraine. This would appear to have been some sort of novitiate, or
period of probation, after which he was supposedly 'initiated' into
some portentous secret. More specifically he is said to have been
shown an ancient and arcane book, on which he based all his own
subsequent work. And this book was reportedly divulged to him at a
very significant place the mysterious Abbey of Orval, donated by
Godfroi de
Bouillon's foster-mother, where our research suggested that the Prieure
de
Sion may have had its inception. In any case, Orval continued, for another two centuries,
to be associated with the name of Nostradamus.
As late as the
French Revolution and the Napoleonic era books of prophecies, purportedly authored by
Nostradamus, were issuing from Orval.
The Bid for the Throne of France
By the mid-1 620s the throne of France was occupied by Louis XIII. But the power behind
the throne, and the real architect of French policy, was the king's prime minister, Cardinal
Richelieu. Richelieu is generally acknowledged to have been the arch-Machiavel, the
supreme machinator, of his age. He may have been something more as well.
While Richelieu established an unprecedented stability in France, the
166
rest of Europe and especially Germany flamed in the throes of the
Thirty Years War. In its origins the Thirty
Years War was not essentially religious. Nevertheless, it quickly
became polarised in religious terms. On one side were the staunchly
Catholic forces of Spain and Austria. On the other were the Protestant
armies of Sweden and the small German principalities -including the
Palatinate of the Rhine, whose rulers, Elector Frederick and his wife
Elizabeth Stuart, were in exile at the Hague. Frederick and his allies
in the field were endorsed and supported by "Rosicrucian' thinkers and
writers both on the continent and in
England.
In 1633 Cardinal Richelieu embarked on an audacious and seemingly
incredible policy. He brought France into the Thirty Years War but not
on the side one would expect. For Richelieu, a number of
considerations took precedence over his religious obligations as
cardinal. He sought to establish French supremacy in Europe. He
sought to neutralise the perpetual and traditional threat posed to
French security by Austria and Spain. And he sought to shatter the
Spanish hegemony which had obtained for more than a century especially
in the old Merovingian heartland of the Low
Countries and parts of modern Lorraine. As a result of these
factors,
Europe was taken aback by the unprecedented action of a Catholic cardinal, presiding
over a Catholic country, dispatching Catholic troops to fight on the Protestant side against
other Catholics. No historian has ever suggested that Richelieu was a "Rosicrucian'. But
he could not possibly have done anything more in keeping with "Rosicrucian' attitudes, or
more likely to win him "Rosicrucian' favour.
In the meantime the house of Lorraine had again begun to aspire, albeit
obliquely, to the French throne. This time the claimant was Gaston
d'Orleans, younger brother of Louis XIII. Gaston was not himself of
the house of Lorraine. In 1632, however, he had married the duke of
Lorraine's sister. His heir would thus carry Lorraine blood on the
maternal side; and if Gaston ascended the throne Lorraine would preside
over France within another generation. This prospect was sufficient to
mobilise support. Among those asserting Gaston's right of succession
we found an individual we had encountered before Charles, Duke of
Guise. Charles had been tutored by the young Robert Fludd. And he had
167
married HenrietteCatherine de joyeuse, owner of Couiza and Arques
-where the tomb identical to the one in Poussin's painting is located.
Attempts to depose Louis in favour of Gaston failed, but time it seemed was on Gaston's
side; or at least on the side of Gaston's heirs, for Louis XIII and his wife, Anne of Austria,
remained childless. Rumours were already in circulation that the king was homosexual or
sexually incapacitated; and indeed, according to certain reports following his subsequent
autopsy, he was pronounced incapable of begetting children.
But then, in 1638, after twenty-three years of sterile marriage, Anne
of Austria suddenly produced a child. Few people at the time believed
in the boy's legitimacy, and there is still considerable doubt about
it. According to both contemporary and later writers, the child's true
father was Cardinal Richelieu, or perhaps a "stud' employed by
Richelieu, quite possibly his protege and successor,
Cardinal Mazarin. It has even been claimed that after Louis XIN's
death,
Mazarin and Anne of Austria were secretly married.
In any case the birth of an heir to Louis XIII was a serious blow to
the hopes of Gaston d'Orleans and the house of Lorraine. And when
Louis and
Richelieu both died in 1642, the first in a series of concerted attempts was launched to
oust Mazarin and keep the young Louis XIV from the throne.
These attempts, which began as popular uprisings, culminated in a civil war that flared
intermittently for ten years. To historians that war is known as the Fronde. In addition to
Gaston d'Orleans, its chief instigators included a number of names, families and titles
already familiar to us.
There was Frederic-Maurice de la Tour dAuvergne, Duke of Bouillon.
There was the viscount of Turenne. There was the duke of Longueville
-grandson of
Louis de Gonzaga, Duke of Nevers and alleged Grand Master of Sion half a century
before. The headquarters and capital of the frondeurs was, significantly enough, the
ancient Ardennes town of Stenay.
The Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement
168
According to the "Prieure documents', the Prieure de Sion, during the
mid-seventeenth century, "dedicated itself to deposing Mazarin'.
Quite clearly it would seem to have been unsuccessful. The Fronde
failed,
Louis XIV did mount the throne of France and Mazarin, though briefly removed, was
quickly reinstated, presiding as prime minister until his death in 1660. But if Sion did in
fact devote itself to opposing Mazarin, we at last had some vector on it, some means of
locating and identifying it. Given the families involved in the Fronde families whose
genealogies also figured in the "Prieure documents' it seemed reasonable to associate
Sion with the instigators of that turmoil.
The "Prieure documents' had asserted that Sion actively opposed Mazarin.
They also asserted that certain families and titles Lorraine, for example, Gonzaga, Nevers,
Guise, Longueville and Bouillon had not only been intimately connected with the Order,
but also provided it with some of its Grand Masters. And history confirmed that it was
these names and titles which had loomed in the forefront of resistance to the cardinal. It
thus seemed that we had located the Prieure de Sion, and that we had identified at least
some of its members. If we were right, Sion during the period in question, at any rate was
simply another name for a movement and a conspiracy which historians had long
recognised and acknowledged.
But if the f rondeurs constituted an enclave of opposition to Mazarin,
they were not the only such enclave. There were others as well,
overlapping enclaves which functioned not only during the Fronde but
long afterwards. The
"Prieure documents' themselves refer repeatedly and insistently to the
Compagriie du Saint-Sacrement. They imply, quite clearly, that the
Compagnie was in fact
Sion, or a fapade for Sion, operating under another name.
And certainly the Compagnie in its structure, organisation, activities and modes of
operation conformed to the picture we had begun to form of Sion.
The Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement was a highly organised and efficient secret society.
There is no question of it being fictitious. On the contrary, its existence has been
acknowledged by its contemporaries, as well as by subsequent historians. It has been
exhaustively documented, and numerous books and articles have been devoted to it. Its
name is familiar enough in France, and it continues to enjoy a certain fashionable
mystique.
169
Some of its own papers have even come to light.
The Compagnie is said to have been founded, between 1627 and 1629, by a nobleman
associated with Gaston d'Orleans. The individuals who guided and shaped its policies
remained scrupulously anonymous, however, and are still so today. The only names
definitively associated with it are those of intermediate or lower-ranking members of its
hierarchy the 'front men',, so to speak, who acted on instructions from above. One of
these was the brother of the duchess of Longueville. Another was Charles Fouquet,
brother of Louis XIV's Superintendent of Finances.
And there was the uncle of the philosopher Fenelon who, half a century
later, exerted a profound influence on Freemasonry through the
Chevalier Ramsay. Among those most prominently associated with the
Compagnie were the mysterious figure now known as Saint
Vincent de Paul, and Nicolas Pavilion, bishop of Alet, the town a few
miles from Rennes-leChateau, and Jean Jacques Olier, founder of the
Seminary of
Saint Sulpice. Indeed Saint Sulpice is now generally acknowledged to
have been the Compagnie's 'centre of operations'. 9
In its organisation and activities the Compagnie echoed the Order of
the
Temple and prefigured later Freemasonry. Working from Saint Sulpice, it established an
intricate network of provincial branches or chapters. Provincial members remained
ignorant of their directors' identities. They were often manipulated on behalf of objectives
they themselves did not share.
They were even forbidden to contact each other except via Paris, thus
ensuring a highly centralised control. And even in Paris the
architects of the society remained unknown to those who obediently
served them. In short the Compagnie comprised a hydra-headed
organisation with an invisible heart. To this day it is not known who
constituted the heart. Nor what constituted the heart. But it is
known that the heart beat in accordance with some veiled and weighty
secret. Contemporary accounts refer explicitly to 'the Secret which is
the core of the Compagnie'. According to one of the society's
statutes, discovered long afterwards, "The primary channel which shapes
the spirit of the Compagnie, and which is essential to it, is the
Secret. "
So far as uninitiated novice members were concerned, the Compagnie was
170
ostensibly devoted to charitable work, especially in regions
devastated by the Wars of Religion and subsequently by the Fronde in Picardy, for
instance, Champagne and Lorraine. It is now generally accepted, however, that this
"charitable work' was merely a convenient and ingenious facade, which had little to do
with the Compagnie's real raison detre. The real raison detre was twofold to engage in
what was called 'pious espionage', gathering 'intelligence information', and to infiltrate the
most important offices in the land, including circles in direct proximity to the throne.
In both of these objectives the Compagnie seems to have enjoyed a
signal success. As a member of the royal "Council of Conscience', for
example,
Vincent de Paul became confessor to Louis XIII. He was also an intimate adviser to Louis
XIV until his opposition to Mazarin forced him to resign this position. And the queen
mother, Anne of Austria, was, in many respects, a hapless pawn of the Compagnie, who
for a time at any rate managed to turn her against Mazarin. But the Compagnie did not
confine itself exclusively to the throne. By the mid seventeenth century, it could wield
power through the aristocracy, the parlement, the judiciary and the police -so much so,
that on a number of occasions these bodies openly dared to defy the king.
In our researches we found no historian, writing either at the time or
more recently, who adequately explained the Compagnie du
Saint-Sacrement. Most authorities depict it as a militant
arch-Catholic organisation, a bastion of rigidly entrenched and fanatic
orthodoxy. The same authorities claim that it devoted itself to
weeding out heretics. But why, in a devoutly
Catholic country, should such an organisation have had to function with such strict
secrecy? And who constituted a "heretic' at that time?
-Protestants? Jansenists? In fact, there were numerous Protestants and
Jansenists within the ranks of the Compagnie.
If the Compagnie was piously Catholic, it should, in theory, have
endorsed
Cardinal Mazarin who, after all, embodied Catholic interests at the time.
Yet the Compagnie militantly opposed Mazarin so much so that the
cardinal, losing his temper, vowed he would employ all his resources to
destroy it. What is more, the Compagnie provoked vigorous hostility in
171
other conventional quarters as well. The Jesuits, for instance,
assiduously campaigned against it. Other
Catholic authorities accused the Compagnie of 'heresy' the very thing
the
Compagnie itself purported to oppose. In 1 651 the bishop of Toulouse charged the
Compagnie with 'impious practices' and hinted at something highly irregular in its
induction ceremonies" - a curious echo of the charges levelled against the Templars. He
even threatened members of the society with excommunication. Most of them brazenly
defied this threat an extremely singular response from supposedly 'pious' Catholics.
The Compagnie had been formed when the "Rosicrucian'furore was still at its zenith. The
'invisible confraternity' was believed to be everywhere, omnipresent and this engendered
not only panic and paranoia, but also the inevitable witch-hunts. And yet no trace was
ever found of a card-carrying "Rosicrucian' nowhere, least of all in Catholic France. So far
as France was concerned, the "Rosicrucians' remained figments of an alarmist popular
imagination. Or did they? If there were indeed "Rosicrucian' interests determined to
establish a foothold in France, what better facade could there be than an organisation
dedicated to hunting out "Rosicrucians'? In short the "Rosicrucians' may have furthered
their objectives, and gained a following in France, by posing as their own arch-enemy.
The Compagnie successfully defied both Mazarin and Louis XIV. In 1660,
less than a year before Mazarin's death, the king officially pronounced
against the Compagnie and ordered its dissolution. For the next five
years the
Compagnie cavalierly ignored the royal edict. At last, in 1665, it concluded that it could
not continue to operate in its 'present form'.
Accordingly all documents pertinent to the society were recalled and concealed in some
secret Paris depository. This depository has never been located, although it is generally
believed to have been Saint Sulpice."2 If it was, the Compagnie's archives would thus
have been available, more than two centuries later, to men like Abbe smile Hof fet.
But though the Compagnie ceased to exist in what was then its 'present form', none the
less it continued to operate at least until the beginning of the next century, still constituting
a thorn in Louis XIV's side.
172
According to unconfirmed traditions, it survived well into the
twentieth century.
Whether this last assertion is true or not, there is no question that
the
Compagnie survived its supposed demise in 1665. In 1667 Moliere, a
loyal adherent of Louis XIV, attacked the Compagnie through certain
veiled but pointed allusions in Le Tartuffe. Despite its apparent
extinction, the
Compagnie retaliated by getting the play suppressed and keeping it so
for two years, despite Moliere's royal patronage. And the Compagnie
seems to have employed its own literary spokesmen as well. It is
rumoured, for example, to have included La Rochefoucauld who was
certainly active in the Fronde. According to Gerard de Sede, La
Fontaine was also a member of the Compagnie, and his charming,
ostensibly innocuous fables were in fact allegorical attacks on the
throne. This is not inconceivable. Louis XIV disliked La Fontaine
intensely, and actively opposed his admission to the
Academie Fran~aisc. And La Fontaine's sponsors and patrons included the duke of
Guise, the duke of Bouillon, the viscount of Turenne and the widow of Gaston d'Orleans.
In the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement we thus found an actual secret society, much of
whose history was on record. It was ostensibly Catholic, but was nevertheless linked with
distinctly un-Catholic activities. It was intimately associated with certain important
aristocratic families families who had been active in the Fronde and whose genealogies
figured in the "Prieure documents'. It was closely connected with Saint Sulpice. It worked
primarily by infiltration and came to exercise enormous influence.
And it was actively opposed to Cardinal Mazarin. In all these respects, it conformed
almost perfectly to the image of the Prieure de Sion as presented in the "Prieure
documents'. If Sion was indeed active during the seventeenth century, we could
reasonably assume it to have been synonymous with the Compagnie. Or perhaps with
the power behind the Compagnie.
Chateau Barberie
173
According to the "Prieure documents', Sion's opposition to Mazarin
provoked bitter retribution from the cardinal. Among the chief victims
of this retribution are said to have been the Plantard family lineal
descendants of Dagobert II and the Merovingian dynasty. In 1548, the
"Prieure documents' state, jean des Plantard had married Marie de
Saint-Clair thus forging another link between his family and that of
the
Saint-Clair/Gisors. By that time, too, the Plantard family was
supposedly established at a certain Chateau Barberie near Nevers, in
the Nivernais region of France. This chateau supposedly constituted
the Plantards' official residence for the next century. Then, on July
11th, 1659, according to the "Prieure documents', Mazarin ordered the
razing and total destruction of the chateau. In the ensuing
conflagration, the Plantard family is said to have lost all its
possessions. '3
No established or conventional history book, no biography of Mazarin, confirmed these
assertions. Our researches yielded no mention whatever of a Plantard family in the
Nivernais, or, at first, of any Chateau Barberie.
And yet Mazarin, for some unspecified reason, did covet the Nivernais
and the duchy of Nevers. Eventually he managed to purchase them and
the contract is signed July 1 1 th , 1 659, "4 the very day on which
Chateau
Barberie is said to have been destroyed.
This prompted us to investigate the matter further. Eventually we
exhumed a few disparate fragments of evidence. They were not enough to
explain things, but they did attest to the veracity of the "Prieure
documents'. In a compilation, dated 1506, of estates and holdings in
the Nivernais a
Barberie was indeed mentioned. A charter of 1575 mentioned a hamlet in
the
Nivernais called Les Plantards. "5
Most convincing of all, it transpired that the existence of Chateau
Ba~berie had in fact been definitively established. During 1874-5
members of the Society of Letters, Sciences and Arts of Nevers
undertook an exploratory excavation on the site of certain ruins. It
was a difficult enterprise, for the ruins were almost unrecognisable as
such, the stones had been vitrified by fire and the site itself was
thickly overgrown with trees. Eventually, however, remnants of a town
wall and of a chateau were uncovered. This site is now acknowledged to
174
have been Barberie. Before its destruction it apparently consisted of
a small fortified town and chateau. '6 And it is within a short distance of the old hamlet of
Les Plantards.
We could now say that Chateau Barberie indisputably existed and was destroyed by fire.
And, given the hamlet of Les Plantards, there was no reason to doubt it had been owned
by a family of that name. The curious fact was that there was no record of when the
chateau had been destroyed, nor by whom. If Mazarin was responsible, he would seem
to have taken extraordinary pains to eradicate all traces of his action.
Indeed there seemed to have been a methodical and systematic attempt to
wipe Chateau
Barberie from the map and from history. Why embark on such a process of obliteration,
unless there was something to hide?
Nicolas Fouquet
Mazarin had other enemies besides the frondeurs and the Compagnie du
Saint-Sacrement. Among the most powerful of them was Nicolas Fouquet, who in 1653,
had become Superintendent of Finances to Louis XIV. A gifted, precocious and ambitious
man, Fouquet, within the next few years, had become the wealthiest and most powerful
individual in the kingdom. He was sometimes called "the true king of France'. And he
was not without political aspirations. It was rumoured that he intended to make Brittany an
independent duchy and himself its presiding duke.
Fouquet's mother was a prominent member of the Compagnie du
Saint-Sacrement. So was his brother Charles, Archbishop of Narbonne in
the
Languedoc. His younger brother, Louis, was also an ecclesiastic. In
1656
Nicolas Fouquet dispatched Louis to Rome, for reasons which -though not
necessarily mysterious have never been explained. From Rome, Louis
wrote the enigmatic letter quoted in Chapter 1 the letter that speaks
of a meeting with Poussin and a secret "which even kings would have
great pains to draw from him'. And indeed, if Louis was indiscreet in
correspondence,
Poussin gave nothing whatever away. His personal seal bore the motto
"Tenet
Confidentiam'.
175
In 1661 Louis XIV ordered the arrest of Nicolas Fouquet. The charges
were extremely general and nebulous. There were vague accusations of misappropriation
of funds, and others, even more vague, of sedition. On the basis of these accusations, all
Fouquet's goods and properties were placed under royal sequestration. But the king
forbade his officers to touch the Superintendent's papers or correspondence. He insisted
on sifting through these documents himself personally and in private.
The ensuing trial dragged on for four years and became the sensation
of
France at the time, violently splitting and pol arising public opinion.
Louis Fouquet who had met with Poussin and written the letter from Rome was dead by
then. But the Superintendent's mother and surviving brother mobilised the Compagnie de
Saint-Sacrement, whose membership also included one of the presiding judges. The
Compagnie threw the whole of its support behind the Superintendent, working actively
through the courts and the popular mind. Louis XIV who was not usually bloodthirsty
demanded nothing less than the death sentence. Refusing to be intimidated by him, the
court passed a sentence of perpetual banishment. Still demanding death, the enraged
king removed the recalcitrant judges and replaced them with others more obedient; but
the Compagnie still seems to have defied him.
Eventually, in 1665, Fouquet was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. On the king's
orders he was kept in rigorous isolation. He was forbidden all writing implements, all
means whereby he might communicate with anyone. And any soldiers who conversed
with him were allegedly consigned to prison ships or, in some cases, hanged."
In 1665, the year of Fouquet's imprisonment, Poussin died in Rome. During the years that
followed, Louis XIV persistently endeavoured through his agents to obtain a single
painting "Les Bergers d'Arcadie'. In 1685 he finally managed to do so. But the painting
was not placed on display not even in the royal residence. On the contrary, it was
sequestered in the king's private apartments, where no one could view it without the
monarch's personal authority.
There is a footnote to Fouquet's story, for his own disgrace, whatever
176
its causes and magnitude, was not visited on his children. By the
middle of the following century Fouquet's grandson, the marquis of
Belle-Isle, had become, in effect, the single most important man in
France. In 1718 the marquis of Belle-Isle ceded Belle-Isle itself a
fortified island off the Breton coast to the crown. In return he
obtained certain interesting territories. One was Longueville, whose
former dukes and duchesses had figured recurrently in our
investigation. And another was Gisors. In 1718 the marquis of
Belle-Isle became count of
Gisors. In 1742 he became duke of Gisors. And in 1748 Gisors was raised to the exalted
status of premier duchy.
Nicolas Poussin
Poussin himself was born in 1 594 in a small town called Les Andelys - a few miles, we
discovered, from Gisors. As a young man he left France and established residence in
Rome, where he spent the duration of his life, returning only once to his native country.
He returned to France in the early 1640s at the request of Cardinal Richelieu, who had
invited him to undertake a specific commission.
Although he was not actively involved in politics, and few historians have touched on his
political interests, Poussin was in fact closely associated with the Fronde. He did not
leave his refuge in Rome. But his correspondence of the period reveals him to have been
deeply committed to the anti-Mazarin movement, and on surprisingly familiar terms with a
number of influential frondeurs so much so, indeed, that, in speaking of them, he
repeatedly uses the word "we', thus clearly implicating himself."
We had already traced the motifs of the underground stream Alpheus,
of
Arcadia and Arcadian shepherds, to Rene d'Anjou. We now undertook to
find an antecedent for the specific phrase in Poussin's painting "Et
in
Arcadia Ego'. It appeared in an earlier painting by Poussin, in which
the tomb is surmounted by a skull and does not constitute an edifice of
its own, but is embedded in the side of a cliff. In the foreground of
this painting a bearded water-deity reposes in an attitude of brooding
moroseness the river god Alpheus, lord of the underground stream. The
177
work dates from 1630 or 1635, five or ten years Fig. 1 The Plantard
Family Crest
"A_
— n'-aK~ca t/
~(_l ~ I I ; r
~ lll-l — II
l~l~. lipl
I I ~_l
/'~/~ I I I, (~-~y , I I I ~ I lii~~r . I Mi I
I |~~ | ~<~ ~|y\'%l'i_
l.j.M
i 1 ai
178
~1 d o~ aaWc earlier than the more familiar version of "Les Bergers
d'Arcadie'.
The phrase "Et in Arcadia Ego' made its public debut between 1618 and 1623 in a
painting by Giovanni Francesco Guercino - a painting which constitutes the real basis for
Poussin's work. In Guercino's painting two shepherds, entering a clearing in a forest,
have just happened upon a stone sepulchre.
It bears the now famous inscription, and there is a large skull resting
on top of it. Whatever the symbolic significance of this work,
Guercino himself raised a number of questions. Not only was he well
versed in esoteric tradition. He also seems to have been conversant
with the lore of secret societies, and some of his other paintings deal
with themes of a specifically Masonic character a good twenty years
before lodges started proliferating in England and Scotland. One
painting, "The Raising of the
Master', pertains explicitly to the Masonic legend of Hiram Abiff,
architect and builder of Solomon's temple. It was executed nearly a
century before the Hiram legend is generally believed to have found its
way into
Masonry."
In the "Prieure documents', "Et in Arcadia Ego' is said to have been
the official device of the Plantard family since at least the twelfth
century, when jean de Plantard married Idoine de Gisors. According to
one source quoted in the "Prieure documents'" it is cited as such as
early as 1210 by one Robert, Abbot of Mont-Saint-Michel. z We were
unable to obtain access to the archives of Mont Saint-Michel, and so
could not verify this assertion. Our research convinced us, however,
that the date of 1 21 0 was demonstrably wrong. In point of fact, there
was no abbot of
Mont-Saint-Michel named Robert in 1210. On the other hand, one Robert
de
Torigny was indeed abbot of Mont Saint-Michel between 1 154 and 1 186.
And
Robert de Torigny is known to have been a prolific and assiduous
historian whose hobbies included collecting mottoes, devices, blazons
and coats-of-arms of noble families throughout Christendom .2'
Whatever the origin of the phrase, "Et in Arcadia Ego' seems, for
both
Guercino and Poussin, to have more than a line of elegiac poetry.
Quite clearly it seems to have enjoyed some important secret
179
significance, which was recognisable or identifiable to certain other
people the equivalent, in short, of a Masonic sign or password. And it is precisely in such
terms that one statement in the "Prieure documents' defines the character of symbolic or
allegorical art:
Allegorical works have this advantage, that a single word suffices to illumine connections
which the multitude cannot grasp. Such works are available to everyone, but their
significance addresses itself to an elite.
Above and beyond the masses, sender and receiver understand each other. The
inexplicable success of certain works derives from this quality of allegory, which
constitutes not a mere fashion, but a form of esoteric communication."
In its context, this statement was made with reference to Poussin.
As
Frances Yates has demonstrated, however, it might equally well be applied to the works of
Leonardo, Botticelli and other Renaissance artists. It might also be applied to later figures
to Nodier, Hugo, Debussy, Cocteau and their respective circles.
Rosslyn Chapel and Shugborough Hall
In our previous research we had found a number of important links
between
Sion's alleged Grand Masters of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries and
European Freemasonry. In the course of our study of Freemasonry we discovered certain
other links as well. These additional links did not relate to the alleged Grand Masters as
such, but they did relate to other aspects of our investigation.
Thus, for example, we encountered repeated references to the Sinclair
family Scottish branch of the Norman Saint-Clair/Gisors family. Their
domain at Rosslyn was only a few miles from the former Scottish
headquarters of the Knights Templar, and the chapel at Rosslyn built
between 1446 and 1486 has long been associated with both Freemasonry
and the Rose-Croix. In a charter believed to date from 1 601 , moreover,
the
Sinclairs are recognised as "hereditary Grand Masters of Scottish
Masonry'z3 This is the earliest specifically Masonic document on
record. According to Masonic
180
sources, however, the hereditary Grand Mastership was conferred on
the
Sinclairs by James II, who ruled between 1437 and 1460 the age of Rene d'Anjou.
Another and rather more mysterious piece of our jigsaw puzzle also
surfaced in Britain this time in Staffordshire, which had been a hotbed
for
Masonic activity in the early and mid-seventeenth century. When
Charles
Radclyffe, alleged Grand Master of Sion, escaped from Newgate Prison in 1714, he was
aided by his cousin, the earl of Lichfield. Later in the century the earl of Lichfield's line
became extinct and his title lapsed.
It was bought in the early nineteenth century by descendants of the Anson family, who are
the present earls of Lichfield.
The seat of the present earls of Lichfield is Shugborough Hall in
Staffordshire. Formerly a bishop's residence, Shugborough was
purchased by the Anson family in 1697. During the following century it
was the residence of the brother of George Anson, the famous admiral
who circumnavigated the globe. When George Anson died in 1762, an
elegiac poem was read aloud in
Parliament. One stanza of this poem reads:
Upon that storied marble cast thine eye.
The scene commands a moralising sigh.
E'en in Arcadia's bless'd Elysian plains,
Amidst the laughing nymphs and sportive swains,
See festal joy subside, with melting grace,
And pity visit the half-smiling face;
Where now the dance, the lute, the nuptial feast,
The passion throbbing in the lover's breast,
Life's emblem here, in youth and vernal bloom,
But reason's finger pointing at the tomb !24
This would seem to be an explicit allusion to Poussin's painting and the inscription "Et in
Arcadia Ego' right down to the "finger pointing at the tomb'. And in the grounds of
Shugborough there is an imposing marble has relief executed at the command of the
Anson family between 1761 and 1767.
This has-relief comprises a reproduction reversed, mirror-fashion of
Poussin's "Les Bergers d'Arcadie'. And immediately below it, there is
181
an enigmatic inscription, which no one has ever satisfactorily
deciphered:
O.U.03N.ANN.
D M
The Pope's Secret Letter
In 1738 Pope Clement XII issued a Papal Bull condemning and
excommunicating all Freemasons, whom he pronounced 'enemies of the
Roman Church'. It has never been altogether clear why they should have
been regarded as such especially as many of them, like the Jacobites at
Catholic. Perhaps the pope was aware of the connection we had discovered between
early Freemasonry and the anti-Roman "Rosicrucians' of the seventeenth century. In any
case some light may be shed on the matter by a letter released and published for the first
time in 1962. This letter had been written by Pope Clement XII and addressed to an
unknown correspondent.
In its text the pope declares that Masonic thought rests on a heresy we
had encountered repeatedly before the denial of Jesus's divinity. And
he further asserts that the guiding spirits, the 'masterminds',
behind
Freemasonry are the same as those who provoked the Lutheran Reformation."
The pope may well have been paranoid; but it is important to note that he is not speaking
of nebulous currents of thought or vague traditions. On the contrary, he is speaking of a
highly organised group of individuals -a sect, an order, a secret society who, through the
ages, have dedicated themselves to subverting the edifice of Catholic Christianity.
The Rock of Sion
In the late eighteenth century, when different Masonic systems were
proliferating wildly, the so-called Oriental Rite of Memphiszs made its
appearance. In this rite the name Ormus occurred, to our knowledge,
for the first time the name allegedly adopted by the Prieure Sion
between 1 188 and 1307. According to the Oriental Rite of Mem phis,
182
Ormus was an Egyptian sage who, around A.D. 46, amalgamated pagan and
Christian mysteries and, in so doing, founded the
Rose-Croix.
In other eighteenth century Masonic rites there are repeated references
to the "Rock of Sion' the same Rock of Sion which, as the "Prieure
documents' quote, rendered the 'royal tradition' established by Godfroi
and
Baudouin de Bouillon "equal' to that of any other reigning dynasty in
Europe. We had previously assumed that the Rock of Sion was simply
Mount
Sion the "high hill' south of Jerusalem on which Godfroi built an abbey to house the order
which became the Prieure de Sion. But Masonic sources ascribe an additional
significance to the Rock of Sion. Given their preoccupation with the Temple of Jerusalem,
it is not surprising that they refer one to specific passages in the Bible. And in these
passages the Rock of Sion is something more than a high hill. It is a particular stone
overlooked or unjustifiably neglected during the building of the Temple, which must
subsequently be retrieved and incorporated as the structure's keystone. According to
Psalm 118, for example:
The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.
In Matthew 21 :42 Jesus alludes specifically to this psalm:
Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is
become the head of the corner.
In Romans 9:33 there is another reference, rather more ambiguous:
Behold, I lay in Sion a stumbling stone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on
him shall not be ashamed.
In Acts 4:1 1 the Rock of Sion might well be interpreted as a metaphor
for
Jesus himself:
by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth .. . doth this man stand here before you whole.
This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the
corner.
In Ephesians 2:20 the equation of Jesus with the Rock of Sion becomes
183
more apparent: built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.
And in 1 Peter 2:3-8 this equation is made even more explicit:
the Lord is gracious. To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men,
but chosen of God, and precious. Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house,
an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
Wherefore it is also contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone,
elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded. Unto you therefore
which believe he is precious: but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the
builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner, And a stone of stumbling,
and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient;
whereunto also they were appointed.
In the very next verse, the text goes on to stress themes whose significance did not
become apparent to us until later. It speaks of an elect line of kings who are both spiritual
and secular leaders, a line of priest-kings:
But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people .. .
What were we to make of these baffling passages? What were we to make
of the Rock of Sion the keystone of the Temple, which seemed to figure
so saliently among the "inner secrets' of Freemasonry? What were we to
make of the explicit identification of this keystone with Jesus
himself? And what were we to make of that "royal tradition' which
because founded on the
Rock of Sion or on Jesus himself was "equal' to the reigning dynasties
of
Europe during the Crusades?='
The Catholic Modernist Movement
In 1833 Jean Baptiste Pitois, Charles Nodier's former disciple at the
Arsenal Library, was an official in the Ministry of Public Education. zd
184
And in that year the Ministry undertook an ambitious project to
publish all hitherto suppressed documents pertinent to the history of France. Two
committees were formed to preside over the enterprise.
These committees included, among others, Victor
Hugo, Jules Michelet and an authority on the Crusades, Baron Emmanuel Rey.
Among the works subsequently published under the auspices of the Ministry of Public
Education was Michelet's monumental Le Proces des Templiers an exhaustive
compilation of Inquisition records dealing with the trials of the Knights Templar. Under the
same auspices Baron Rey published a number of works dealing with the Crusades and
the Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem.
In these works there appeared in print for the first time original charters pertaining to the
Prieure de Sion. At certain points the texts Rey quotes are almost verbatim with passages
in the "Prieure documents'.
In 1875 Baron Rey co-founded the Societe de 1 "Orient Latin ("Society of
the
Latin or Frankish Middle East'). Based in Geneva, this society devoted
itself to ambitious archaeological projects. It also published its own
magazine, the Revue de FOrient Latin, which is now one of the primary
sources for modern historians like Sir Steven Runciman, The Revue de
FOrient Latin reproduced a number of additional charters of the Prieure
de
Sion.
Rey's research was typical of a new form of historical scholarship
appearing in Europe at the time, most prominently in' Germany, which
constituted an extremely serious threat to the Church. The
dissemination of
Darwinian thought and agnosticism had already produced a "crisis of
faith' in the late nineteenth century, and the new scholarship
magnified the crisis. In the past, historical research had been, for
the most part, an unreliable affair, resting on highly tenuous
foundations -on legend and tradition, on personal memoirs, on
exaggerations promulgated for the sake of one or another cause. Only
in the nineteenth century did German scholars begin introducing the
rigorous, meticulous techniques that are now accepted as commonplace,
the stockin-trade of any responsible historian. Such preoccupation
with critical examination, with investigation of first-hand sources,
with cross-references and exact chronology, established the
185
conventional stereotype of the Teutonic pedant. But if German writers
of the period tended to lose themselves in minutiae, they also provided a solid basis for
inquiry. And for a number of major archaeological discoveries as well. The most famous
example, of course, is Heinrich Schliemann's excavation of the site of Troy.
It was only a matter of time before the techniques of German scholarship were applied,
with similar diligence, to the Bible. And the Church, which rested on unquestioning
acceptance of dogma, was well aware that the Bible itself could not withstand such critical
scrutiny. In his best-selling and highly controversial Life of Jesus, Ernest Renan had
already applied German methodology to the New Testament, and the results, for Rome,
were extremely embarrassing.
The Catholic Modernist Movement arose initially as a response to this new challenge. Its
original objective was to produce a generation of ecclesiastical experts trained in the
German tradition, who could defend the literal truth of Scripture with all the heavy
ordnance of critical scholarship. As it transpired, however, the plan backfired.
The more the
Church sought to equip its younger clerics with the tools for combat in the modern
polemical world, the more those same clerics began to desert the cause for which they
had been recruited. Critical examination of the Bible revealed a multitude of
inconsistencies, discrepancies and implications that were positively inimical to Roman
dogma. And by the end of the century the Modernists were no longer the elite shock-
troops the Church had hoped they would be, but defectors and incipient heretics. Indeed,
they posed the most serious threat the Church had experienced since Martin Luther, and
brought the entire edifice of Catholicism to the brink of a schism unparalleled for centuries.
The hotbed for Modernist activity as it had been for the Compagnie du
Saint-Sacrement was Saint Sulpice in Paris. Indeed, one of the most
resonant voices in the Modernist movement was the man who was director
of the Seminary of Saint Sulpice from 1 852 to 1 884.29 From Saint
Sulpice
Modernist attitudes spread rapidly to the rest of France, and to Italy
and
Spain. According to these attitudes, Biblical texts were not
unimpugnably authoritative, but had to be understood in the specific
context of their time. And the Modernists also rebelled against the
186
increasing centralisation of ecclesiastical power especially the
recently instituted doctrine of papal infallibility,3" which ran
flagrantly counter to the new trend. Before long Modernist attitudes
were being disseminated not only by intellectual clerics, but by
distinguished and influential writers as well. Figures like Roger
Martin du Gard in France, and Miguel de
Unamuno in Spain, were among the primary spokesmen for Modernism.
The Church responded with predictable vigour and wrath. The Modernists
were accused of being Freemasons. Many of them were suspended or even
excommunicated, and their books were placed on the Index. In 1903 Pope
Leo XIII established the Pontifical Biblical Commission to monitor the
work of scriptural scholars. In 1907 Pope Pius X issued a formal
condemnation of
Modernism. And on September 1st, 1910, the Church demanded of its clerics an oath
against Modernist tendencies.
Nevertheless Modernism continued to flourish until the First World War
diverted public attention to other concerns. Until 1914 it remained a
cause celebre. One Modernist author, the Abbe Turmel, proved a
particularly mischievous individual. While ostensibly behaving
impeccably at his teaching post in Brittany, he published a series of
Modernist works under no less than fourteen different pseudonyms. Each
of them was placed on the
Index, but not until 1929 was Turmel identified as their author.
Needless to say, he was then summarily excommunicated.
In the meantime Modernism spread to Britain, where it was warmly
welcomed and endorsed by the Anglican Church. Among its Anglican
adherents was
William Temple, later archbishop of Canterbury, who declared that Modernism 'is what
most educated people already believe '.3' One of Temple's associates was Canon A. L.
Liney. And Liney knew the priest from whom we had received that portentous letter which
spoke of 'incontrovertible proof that Jesus did not die on the cross.
Liney, as we knew, had worked for some time in Paris, where he made the
acquaintance of the Abbe tmile Hoffet the man to whom Sauniere brought
the parchments found at Rennes-leChateau. With his expertise in
history, language and linguistics, Hoffet was the typical young
187
Modernist scholar of his age. He had not been trained at Saint
Sulpice, however. On the contrary, he had been trained in Lorraine.
At the Seminary
School of Sion: La Colline inspiree.3z
The Protocols of Sion
One of the most persuasive testimonials we found to the existence and
activities of the Prieure de Sion dated from the late nineteenth
century.
The testimonial in question is well enough known but it is not recognised as a testimonial.
On the contrary it has always been associated with more sinister things. It has played a
notorious role in recent history and still tends to arouse such violent emotions, bitter
antagonisms and gruesome memories that most writers are happy to dismiss it out of
hand. To the extent that this testimonial has contributed significantly to human prejudice
and suffering, such a reaction is perfectly understandable. But if the testimonial has been
criminally misused, our researches convinced us that it has also been seriously
misunderstood.
The role of Rasputin at the court of Nicholas and Alexandra of Russia is more or less
generally known. It is not generally known, however, that there were influential, even
powerful esoteric enclaves at the Russian court long before Rasputin. During the 1890s
and 1900s one such enclave formed itself around an individual known as Monsieur
Philippe, and around his mentor, who made periodic visits to the imperial court at
Petersburg.
And Monsieur Philippe's mentor was none other than the man called Papus33 the French
esotericist associated with Jules Doinel (founder of the neo-Cathar church in the
Languedoc), Peladan (who claimed to have discovered Jesus's tomb), Emma Calve and
Claude Debussy. In a word, the "French occult revival' of the late nineteenth century had
not only spread to Petersburg. Its representatives also enjoyed the privileged status of
personal confidants to the czar and czarina.
However, the esoteric enclave of Papus and Monsieur Philippe was
actively opposed by certain other powerful interests the Grand Duchess
Elizabeth, for example, who was intent on installing her own favourites
in proximity to the imperial throne. One of the grand duchess's
favourites was a rather contemptible individual known to posterity
188
under the pseudonym of Sergei Nilus. Sometime around 1903 Nilus
presented a highly controversial document to the czar a document that supposedly bore
witness to a dangerous conspiracy. But if Nilus expected the czar's gratitude for his
disclosure, he must have been grievously disappointed. The czar declared the document
to be an outrageous fabrication, and ordered all copies of it to be destroyed. And Nilus
was banished from the court in disgrace.
Of course the document or, at any rate, a copy of it -survived. In 1 903 it was serialised in
a newspaper but failed to attract any interest. In 1 905 it was published again this time as
an appendix to a book by a distinguished mystical philosopher, Vladimir Soloviov. At this
point it began to attract attention. In the years that followed it became one of the single
most infamous documents of the twentieth century.
The document in question was a tract, or, more strictly speaking, a
purported social and political programme. It has appeared under a
variety of slightly differing titles, the most common of which is The
Protocols o f the Elders of Sion."4 The Protocols allegedly issued from
specifically
Jewish sources. And for a great many anti-Semites at the time they were convincing proof
of an "international Jewish conspiracy'. In 1919, for example, they were distributed to
troops of the White Russian Army and these troops, during the next two years, massacred
some 60,000 Jews who were held responsible for the 1917 Revolution. By 1 91 9 the
Protocols were also being circulated by Alfred Rosenberg, later the chief racial
theoretician and propagandist for the National Socialist Party in Germany.
In Mein Kampf Hitler used the Protocols to fuel his own fanatical
prejudices, and is said to have believed unquestioningly in their
authenticity. In England the Protocols were immediately accorded
credence by the Morning Post. Even The Times, in 1 921 , took them
seriously and only later admitted its error. Experts today concur and
rightly so, we concluded that the Protocols, at least in their present
form, are a vicious and insidious forgery. Nevertheless, they are
still being circulated in Latin America, in Spain, even in Britain as
anti-Semitic propaganda .35
189
The Protocols propound in outline a blueprint for nothing less than
total world domination. On first reading they would seem to be the
Machiavellian programme a kind of inter-office memo, so to speak for a
group of individuals determined to impose a new world order, with
themselves as supreme despots. The text advocates a many-tentacled
hydra-headed conspiracy dedicated to disorder and anarchy, to toppling
certain existing regimes, infiltrating Freemasonry and other such
organisations, and eventually seizing absolute control of the Western
world's social, political and economic institutions. And the anonymous
authors of the Protocols declare explicitly that they 'stage-managed'
whole peoples 'according to a political plan which no one has so much
as guessed at in the course of many centuries 1 .36
To a modern reader the Protocols might seem to have been devised by
some fictitious organisation like SPECTRE -James Bond's adversary in
Ian
Fleming's novels. When they were first publici sed however, the
Protocols were alleged to have been composed at an International Judaic
Congress which convened in Basle in 1897. This allegation has long
since been disproved. The earliest copies of the Protocols, for
example, are known to have been written in French and the 1897 Congress
in Basle did not include a single French delegate. Moreover, a copy of
the Protocols is known to have been in circulation as early as 1884 - a
full thirteen years before the Basle Congress met. The 1884 copy of
the Protocols surfaced in the hands of a member of a Masonic lodge the
same lodge of which Papus was a member and subsequently Grand Master
.3' Moreover, it was in this same lodge that the tradition of Ormus had
first appeared the legendary
Egyptian sage who amalgamated pagan and Christian mysteries and founded
the
Rose-Croix.
Modern scholars have established in fact that the Protocols, in their
published form, are based at least in part on a satirical work written
and printed in Geneva in 1864. The work was composed as an attack on
Napoleon
III by a man named Maurice Joly, who was subsequently imprisoned. Joly is said to have
been a member of a Rose Croix order. Whether this is true or not, he was a friend of
Victor Hugo; and Hugo, who shared Joly's antipathy to Napoleon III, was a member of a
Rose-Croix order.
190
It can thus be proved conclusively that the Protocols did not issue
from the Judaic Congress at Basle in 1897. That being so, the obvious
question is whence they did issue. Modern scholars have dismissed them
as a total forgery, a wholly spurious document concocted by
anti-Semitic interests intent on discrediting Judaism. And yet the
Protocols themselves argue strongly against such a conclusion. They
contain, for example, a number of enigmatic references -references that
are clearly not
Judaic. But these references are so clearly not Judaic that they cannot plausibly have
been fabricated by a forger either. No anti-Semitic forger with even a modicum of
intelligence would possibly have concocted such references in order to discredit Judaism.
For no one would have believed these references to be of Judaic origin.
Thus, for instance, the text of the Protocols ends with a single statement, "Signed by the
representatives of Sion of the 33rd Degree.
'3e
Why would an anti-Semitic forger have made up such a statement? Why
would he not have attempted to incriminate all Jews, rather than just a
few the few who constitute 'the representatives of Sion of the 33
Degree'? Why would he not declare that the document was signed by,
say, the representatives of the International Judaic Congress? In
fact, the 'representatives of Sion of the 33rd Degree' would hardly
seem to refer to
Judaism at all, or to any 'international Jewish conspiracy'. If anything, it would seem to
refer to something specifically Masonic.
And the 33rd
Degree in Freemasonry is that of the so-called "Strict Observance' the system of
Freemasonry introduced by Hund at the behest of his 'unknown superiors', one of whom
appears to have been Charles Radclyffe.
The Protocols contain other even more flagrant anomalies. The text speaks repeatedly,
for example, of the advent of a "Masonic Kingdom', and of a "King of the blood of Sion',
who will preside over this "Masonic Kingdom'.
It asserts that the future king will be of 'the dynastic roots of
King
David'. It affirms that 'the King of the Jews will be the real Pope'
and 'the patriarch of an international church'. And it concludes in a
most cryptic fashion, "Certain members of the seed of David will
prepare the
Kings and their heirs .. . Only the King and the three who stood
191
sponsor for him will know what is coming. "39 As an expression of
Judaic thought, real or fabricated, such statements are blatantly
absurd. Since Biblical times no king has figured in Judaic tradition,
and the very principle of kingship has become utterly irrelevant. The
concept of a king would have been as meaningless to Jews of 1897 as it
would be to Jews today; and no forger can have been ignorant of this
fact. Indeed the references quoted would appear to be more Christian
than Judaic. For the last two millennia the only "King of the Jews'
has been Jesus himself and Jesus, according to the Gospels, was of the
"dynastic roots of David'. If one is fabricating a document and
ascribing it to a Jewish conspiracy, why include such patently
Christian echoes? Why speak of so specifically and uniquely Christian
a concept as a pope? Why speak of an "international church' rather
than an international synagogue or an international temple? And why
include the enigmatic allusion to 'the
King and the three who stood sponsor' which is less suggestive of
Judaism and Christianity than it is of the secret societies of Johann
Valentin
Andrea and Charles Nodier? If the Protocols issued wholly from a propagandist's
antiSemitic imagination, it is difficult to imagine a propagandist so inept, or so ignorant and
uninformed.
On the basis of prolonged and systematic research, we reached certain
conclusions about the Protocols of the Elders of Sion. They are as
follows. 1) There was an original text on which the published version
of the
Protocols was based. This original text was not a forgery. On the
contrary it was authentic. But it had nothing whatever to do with
Judaism or an 'international Jewish conspiracy'. It issued rather from
some Masonic organisation or Masonically oriented secret society which
incorporated the word "Sion'. 2) The original text on which the
published version of the Protocols was based need not have been
provocative or inflammatory in its language. But it may well have
included a programme for gaining power, for infiltrating
Freemasonry, for controlling social, political and economic institutions.
Such a programme would have been perfectly in keeping with the secret
societies of the Renaissance, as well as with the Compagnie du
Saint-Sacrement and the institutions of Andrea and Nodier. 3) The
192
original text on which the published version of the Protocols was
based fell into the hands of Sergei Nilus. Nilus did not at first
intend it to discredit Judaism. On the contrary, he brought it to the
czar with the intention of discrediting the esoteric enclave at the
imperial court -the enclave of Papus, Monsieur Philippe and others who
were members of the secret society in question. Before doing so, he
almost certainly doctored the language, rendering it far more venomous
and inflammatory than it initially was. When the czar spurned him,
Nilus then released the Protocols in their doctored form for
publication. They had failed in their primary objective of
compromising Papus and Monsieur
Philippe. But they might still serve a secondary purpose that of
fostering anti-Semitism. Although Nilus's chief targets had been Papus
and Monsieur
Philippe, he was hostile to Judaism as well. 4) The published version of the Protocols is
not, therefore, a totally fabricated text. It is rather a radically altered text. But despite the
alterations certain vestiges of the original version can be discerned as in a palimpsest, or
as in passages of the Bible. These. vestiges which referred to a king, a pope, an
international church, and to Sion probably meant little or nothing to Nilus. He certainly
would not have invented them himself. But if they were already there, he would have had
no reason, given his ignorance, to excise them. And while such vestiges might have been
irrelevant to Judaism, they might have been extremely relevant to a secret society. As we
learned subsequently, they were and still are of paramount importance to the Prieure de
Sion.
The Hieron du Val d'Or
While we pursued our independent research, new "Prieure documents' had
continued to appear. Some of them privately printed works, like the
Dossiers secrets, and intended for limited circulation were made
available to us through the offices of friends in France or through the
Bibliotheque
Nationale. Others appeared in book form, newly published and released on the market for
the first time.
193
In some of these works there was additional information on the late
nineteenth century, and specifically on Berenger Sauniere.
According to one such "up-dated' account, Sauniere did not discover the fateful
parchments in his church by accident. On the contrary he is said to have been directed to
them by emissaries of the Prieure de Sion who visited him at Rennes-leChateau and
enlisted him as their factotum. In late 1916 Sauniere is reported to have defied the
emissaries of Sion and quarrelled with them." If this is true, the cure's death in January
1917 acquires a more sinister quality than is generally ascribed to it. Ten days before his
death he had been in satisfactory health. Nevertheless ten days before his death a coffin
was ordered on his behalf. The receipt for the coffin, dated January 12th, 1917, is made
out to Sauniere's confidante and housekeeper, Marie Denarnaud.
A more recent and, if anything, more apparently authoritative "Prieure'
publication elaborates further on Sauniere's story and would seem to
confirm, at least in part, the account summarised above. According to
this publication, Sauniere himself was little more than a pawn and his
role in the mystery of Rennes-leChateau has been much exaggerated. The
real force behind the events at the mountain village is said to have
been Sauniere's friend, the Abbe Henri Boudet, cure of the adjacent
village of
Rennes-le-Bains."
Boudet is said to have provided Sauniere with all his money a total of thirteen million
francs between 1887 and 1915. And Boudet is said to have guided Sauniere on his
various projects the public works, the construction of the Villa Bethania and the Tour
Magdala. He is also said to have supervised the restoration of the church at
RennesleChateau, and to have designed Sauniere's perplexing Stations of the Cross as a
kind of illustrated version, or visual equivalent, of a cryptic book of his own.
According to this recent "Prieure' publication, Sauniere remained
essentially ignorant of the real secret for which he acted as custodian
until Boudet, in the throes of approaching death, confided it to him
in
March 1915. According to the same publication, Marie Denarnaud, Sauniere's
housekeeper, was in fact Boudet's agent. It was through her that Boudet supposedly
transmitted instructions to Sauniere. And it was to her that all money was made payable.
Or, rather, most money.
194
For Boudet, between 1885 and 1901, is said to have paid 7,655,250
francs to the bishop of Carcassonne the man who, at his own expense,
dispatched Sauniere to
Paris with the parchments. The bishop, too, would seem then to have been essentially in
Boudet's employ. It is certainly an incongruous situation an important regional bishop
being the paid servit or of a humble, backwater parish priest. And the parish priest
himself? For. whom was Boudet working?
What interests did he represent? What can have given him the power to enlist the
services, and the silence, of his ecclesiastical superior? And who can have furnished him
with such vast financial resources to be dispensed so prodigally? These questions are not
answered explicitly. But the answer is constantly implicit the Prieure de Sion.
Further light on the matter was shed by another recent work which, like its predecessors,
seemed to draw on 'privileged sources' of information.
The work in question is Le Tresor du triangle d'or ("The Treasure of
the
Golden Triangle') by jean-Luc Chaumeil, published in 1 979. According
to M. Chaumeil, a number of clerics involved in the enigma of
Rennes-leChateau - Sauniere, Boudet, quite probably others like Hoffet,
Hoffet's uncle at
Saint Sulpice and the bishop of Carcassonne were affiliated with a form of "Scottish Rite'
Freemasonry. This Freemasonry, M. Chaumeil declares, differed from most other forms
in that it was "Christian, Hermetic and aristocratic'. In short, it did not, like many rites of
Freemasonry, consist primarily of free-thinkers and atheists. On the contrary, it seems to
have been deeply religious and magically oriented emphasising a sacred social and
political hierarchy, a divine order, an underlying cosmic plan.
And the upper grades or degrees of this Freemasonry, according to M.
Chaumeil, were the lower grades or degrees of the Prieure de Sion."
In our own researches we had already encountered a Freemasonary of the
sort M. Chaumeil describes. Indeed M. Chaumeil's description could
readily be applied to the original "Scottish Rite' introduced by
Charles Radclyffe and his associates. Both Radclyffe's Masonry and the
Masonry M. Chaumeil describes would have been acceptable, despite papal
condemnation, to devout
195
Catholics whether eighteenth-century Jacobites or nineteenth-century
French priests. In both cases Rome certainly disapproved and quite vehemently.
Nevertheless the individuals involved seem not only to have persisted in regarding
themselves as Christians and Catholics. They also seem, on the basis of available
evidence, to have received a major and exhilarating transfusion of faith a transfusion that
enabled them to see themselves as, if anything, more truly Christian than the papacy.
Although M. Chaumeil is both vague and evasive, he strongly implies that in the years
prior to 1914 the Freemasonry of which Boudet and Sauniere were members became
amalgamated with another esoteric institution -an institution that might well explain some
of the curious references to a monarch in the Protocols of the Elders of Sion, especially if,
as M. Chaumeil further intimates, the real power behind this other institution was also the
Prieure de Sion.
The institution in question was called the Hieron du Val d'Or which
would seem to be a verbal transposition of that recurring site,
Orva1.4' The
Hieron du Val d'Or was a species of secret political society founded, it would appear,
around 1 873. It seems to have shared much with other esoteric organisations of the
period. There was, for example, a characteristic emphasis on sacred geometry and
various sacred sites. There was an insistence on a mystical or Gnostic truth underlying
mythological motifs.
There was a preoccupation with the origins of men, races, languages and
symbols, such as occurs in Theosophy. And like many other sects and
societies of the time, the Hieron du Val d'Or was simultaneously
Christian and trans Christian It stressed the importance of the Sacred
Heart, for instance, yet linked the Sacred Heart with other,
pre-Christian symbols. It sought to reconcile as the legendary Ormus
was said to have reconciled Christian and pagan mysteries. And it
ascribed special significance to
Druidic thought which, like many modern experts, it regarded as
partially
Pythagorean. All of these themes are adumbrated in the published work
of
Sauniere's friend, the Abbe Henri Boudet.
For the purposes of our inquiry, the Hieron du Val d'Or proved relevant
by virtue of its formulation of what M. Chaumeil calls an "esoteric
196
geopolitics' and an "ethnarchical world order'. Translated into more
mundane terms this entailed, in effect, the establishment of a new Holy
Roman Empire in nineteenth-century Europe -a revitalised and
reconstituted Holy Roman
Empire, a secular state that unified all peoples and rested ultimately on spiritual, rather
than social, political or economic foundations. Unlike its predecessor, this new Holy
Roman Empire would have been genuinely "holy' genuinely "Roman' and genuinely
"imperial' although the specific meaning of these terms would have differed crucially from
the meaning accepted by tradition and convention. Such a state would have realised the
centuries-old dream of a "heavenly kingdom' on earth, a terrestrial replica or mirror-image
of the order, harmony and hierarchy of the cosmos. It would have actualised the ancient
Hermetic premise, "As above, so below'. And it was not altogether Utopian or naive. On
the contrary, it was at least remotely feasible in the context of late nineteenth-century
Europe.
According to M. Chaumeil, the objectives of the Hieron du Val d'Or were:
a theocracy wherein nations would be no more than provinces, their leaders but
proconsuls in the service of a world occult government consisting of an elite. For Europe,
this regime of the Great King implied a double hegemony of the Papacy and the Empire,
of the Vatican and of the Habsburgs, who would have been the Vatican's right arm."
By the nineteenth century, of course, the Habsburgs were synonymous
with the house of Lorraine. The concept of a "Great King' would thus
have constituted a fulfilment of Nostradamus's prophecies. And it
would also have actualised, at least in some sense, the monarchist
blueprint outlined in the Protocols of the Elders of Sion. At the same
time the realisation of so grandiose a design would clearly have
entailed a number of changes in existing institutions. The Vatican,
for example, would presumably have been a very different Vatican from
the one then situated in Rome. And the Habsburgs would have been more
than imperial heads of state. They would have become, in effect, a
dynasty of priest-kings, like the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. Or like
197
the Messiah anticipated by the Jews at the dawn of the Christian era.M. Chaumeil does
not clarify the extent, if any, to which the Habsburgs themselves were actively involved in
these ambitious clandestine designs.
There is a quantity of evidence, however including the visit of a
Habsburg archduke to Rennes-leChateau which seemingly attests to at
least some implication. But whatever plans were afoot, they would have
been thwarted by the First World War, which, among other things,
toppled the
Habsburgs from power.
As M. Chaumeil explained them, the objectives of the Hieron du Val d'Or or of the Prieure
de Sion made a certain logical sense in the context of what we had discovered. They
shed new light on the Protocols of the Elders of Sion. They concurred with the stated
objectives of various secret societies, including those of Charles Radclyffe and Charles
Nodier. Most important of all, they conformed to the political aspirations which, through
the centuries, we had traced in the house of Lorraine.
But if the Hieron du Val d'Or's objectives made logical sense, they did
not make practical political sense. On what basis, we wondered, would
the
Habsburgs have asserted their right to function as a dynasty of priest-kings? Unless it
commanded overwhelming popular support, such a right could not possibly have been
asserted against the republican government of France not to mention the imperial
dynasties then presiding over Russia, Germany and Britain. And how could the necessary
popular support have been obtained?
In the context of nineteenth-century political realities such a scheme, while logically
consistent, seemed to us effectively absurd. Perhaps, we concluded, we had
misconstrued the Hieron du Val d'Or. Or perhaps the members of the Hieron du Val d'Or
were quite simply potty.
Until we obtained further information, we had no choice but to shelve
the matter. In the meantime, we turned our attention to the present to
determine whether the Prieure de Sion existed today. As we quickly
discovered, it did. Its members were not at all potty, and they were
pursuing, in the post-war twentieth century, a programme essentially
198
similar to that pursued in the nineteenth by the Hieron du Val d'Or.
8 The Secret Society Today
The French journal Officiel is a weekly government publication in which all groups,
societies and organisations in the country must declare themselves. In the Journal Of
ficiel for the week of July 20th, 1 956 (Issue Number 1 67), there is the following entry:
25 juin 1956. Declaration a la sous-prefecture de Saint Julien-en-Genevois. Prieure de
Sion. But: etudes et entr'aide des membres. Siege social: Sous-Cassan, Annemasse
(Haute Savoie).
(June 25th, 1956. Declaration to the Sub-Prefecture of
Saint-Julien-en-Genevois. Prieure de Sion. Objectives: studies and mutual aid to
members. Head office: SousCassan, Annemasse, Haute Savoie.)
The Prieure de Sion was officially registered with the police. Here, at any rate, appeared
to be definitive proof of its existence in our own age even though we found it somewhat
odd that a supposedly secret society should thus broadcast itself. But perhaps it was not
so odd after all. There was no listing for the Prieure de Sion in any French telephone
directory. The address proved too vague to allow us to identify a specific office, house,
building or even street. And the Sub-Prefecture, when we rang them, were of little help.
There had been numerous inquiries, they said, with weary, long-suffering resignation. But
they could provide no further information. As far as they knew, the address was
untraceable. If nothing else, this gave us pause.
Among other things, it made us wonder how certain individuals had
contrived to register a fictitious or nonexistent address with the
police and then, apparently, escape all subsequent consequences and
prosecution of the matter. Were the police really as insouciant and
indifferent as they sounded? Or had Sion somehow enlisted their
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cooperation and discretion? The Sub-Prefecture, at our request,
provided us with a copy of what purported to be the Prieure de Sion's statutes. This
document, which consisted of twenty-one articles, was neither controversial nor
particularly illuminating. It did not, for example, clarify the Order's objectives. It gave no
indication of Sion's possible influence, membership or resources. On the whole, it was
rather bland while at the same time compounding our perplexity. At one point, for
instance, the statutes declared that admission to the Order was not to be restricted on the
basis of language, social origin, class or political ideology. At another point, they
stipulated that all Catholics over the age of twenty-one were eligible for candidature.
Indeed the statutes in general appeared to have issued from a piously,
even fervently Catholic institution. And yet Sion's alleged
Grand Masters and past history, in so far as we had been able to trace
them, hardly attested to any orthodox Catholicism. For that matter,
even the modern "Prieure documents', many of them published at the same
time as the statutes, were less Catholic in orientation than Hermetic,
even heretically Gnostic. The contradiction seemed to make no sense
-unless
Sion, like the Knights Templar and the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement,
demanded Catholicism as an exoteric prerequisite, which might then be
transcended within the Order. At any rate Siou, like the Temple and
the
Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement, apparently demanded an obedience which, in its
absolute nature, subsumed all other commitments, secular or spiritual.
According to Article vii of the statutes, "The candidate must renounce his personality in
order to devote himself to the service of a high moral apostolate'.
The statutes further declare that Sion functions under the subtitle
of
Chevalerie d'lnstitutions et Regies Catholiques, d'Union Independante
et
Traditionaliste ("Chivalry of Catholic Rules and Institutions of the Independent and
Traditionalist Union'). This abbreviates to CIRCUIT," the name of a magazine which,
according to the statutes, is published internally by the Order and circulated within its
ranks.
Perhaps the most interesting information in the statutes is that since
200
1956 the Prieure de Sion would seem to have expanded its membership
almost fivefold. According to a page reproduced in the Dossiers secrets, printed
sometime before 1956, Sion had a total of 1,093 members ranked in seven grades. The
structure was traditionally pyramidal. At the top was the Grand Master, or "Nautonnier'.
There were three in the grade below him ("Prince Noachite de Notre Dame'), nine in the
grade below that ("Croise de Saint-Jean'). Each grade from here downwards was three
times as large as the grade before it 27, 81 , 243, 729. The three highest grades the
Grand Master and his twelve immediate subordinates were said to constitute the thirteen
"Rose-Croix'. The number would also, of course, correspond to anything from a satanic
coven to Jesus and his twelve disciples.
According to the post-1956 statutes, Sion had a total membership of 9,841 , ranked not in
seven grades but in nine. The structure seems to have remained essentially the same,
although it was clarified, and two new grades had been introduced at the bottom of the
hierarchy thus further insulating the leadership behind a larger network of novices.
The Grand
Master still retained the title of "Nautonnier'. The three "Princes
Noachites de Notre Dame' were simply called "Seneschals'. The nine "Croises de Saint-
Jean' were called "Constables'. The organisation of the Order, in the portentously
enigmatic jargon of the statutes, was as follows:
The general assembly is composed of all members of the association. It consists of 729
provinces, 27 command eries and an Arch designated "Kyria'.
Each of the command eries as well as the Arch, must consist of forty members, each
province of thirteen members.
The members are divided into two effective groups:
a) The Legion, charged with the apostolate. b) The Phalange, guardian of the Tradition.
The members compose a hierarchy of nine grades.
The hierarchy of nine grades consists of:
201
a) in the 729 provinces 1) Novices: 6561 members 2) Croises: 2187
members b) in the 27 command eries 3) Preux: 729 members 4) Ecuyers:
243 members 5) Chevaliers: 81 members 6) Commandeurs: 27 members c) in the Arch
"Kyria': 7) Connetables: 9 members 8) Senechaux: 3 members 9)
Nautonnier: 1 member 2
Apparently for official bureaucratic and legal purposes, four
individuals were listed as comprising "The Council'. Three of the
names were unfamiliar to us and, quite possibly, pseudonyms Pierre
Bonhomme, born December 7th, 1934, President; Jean Delaval, born March
7th, 1931, Vice-President; Pierre
Defagot, born December 11th, 1928, Treasurer. One name, however, we
had encountered before Pierre Plantard, born March 18th, 1920,
Secretary-General. According to the research of another writer, M.
Plantard's official title was Secretary General of the Department of
Documentation which implies, of course, that there are other departments as well.
Alain Poher
By the early 1970s the Prieure de Sion had become a modest cause
celebre among certain people in France. There were a number of
magazine articles and some newspaper coverage. On February 13th, 1973,
the Midi Libre published a lengthy feature on Sion, Sauniere and the
mystery of Rennes-leChateau. This feature specifically linked Sion
with a possible survival of the Merovingian bloodline into the
twentieth century. It also suggested that the Merovingian descendants
included a 'true pretender to the throne of France', whom it identified
as M. Alain Poher. 3
While not especially well known in Britain or the United States Alain
Poher was (and still is) a household name in France. During the Second
202
World War he won the Resistance Medal and the Croix de Guerre.
Following the resignation of de
Gaulle, he was Provisional President of France from April 28th to June
1 9th , 1 969. He occupied the same position on the death of Georges
Pompidou, from
April 2nd to May 27th. 1974. In 1973, when the feature in the Midi Libre appeared, M.
Poher was President of the French Senate.
As far as we know, M. Poher never commented, one way or the other, on his alleged
connections with the Prieure de Sion and/or the Merovingian bloodline. In the
genealogies of the "Prieure documents', however, there is mention of Arnaud, Count of
Poher, who, sometime between 894 and 896, intermarried with the Plantard family the
direct, descendants supposedly of Dagobert II. Arnaud de Poher's grandson, Alain,
became duke of Brittany in 937. Whether or not M. Poher acknowledges Sion, it would
thus seem clear that Sion acknowledges him as being, at the very least, of Merovingian
descent.
The Lost King
In the meantime, while we pursued our research and the French media
accorded periodic flurries of attention to the whole affair, new
"Prieure documents' continued to appear. As before, some appeared in
book form, others as privately printed pamphlets or articles deposited
in the Bibliotheque
Nationale. If anything, they only compounded the mystification.
Someone was obviously producing this material, but their real objective
remained unclear. At times we nearly dismissed the whole affair as an
elaborate joke, a hoax of extravagant proportions. If this were true,
however, it was a hoax that certain people seemed to have been
sustaining for centuries and if one invests so much time, energy and
resources in a hoax, can it really be called a hoax at all? In fact
the interlocking skeins and the overall fabric of the "Prieure
documents' were less a joke than a work of art a display of ingenuity,
suspense, brilliance, intricacy, historical knowledge and architectonic
complexity worthy of, say, James Joyce. And while Finnegans
Wake may be regarded as a joke of sorts, there is no question that its
203
creator took it very seriously indeed. It is important to note that
the "Prieure documents' did not constitute a conventional 'bandwagon' -
a lucrative fashion which burgeoned into a profitable industry,
spawning sequels, 'prequels' and assorted other derivatives. They
could not be compared, for example, to von Daniken's
Chariots of the Gods, the sundry accounts of the Bermuda Triangle or
the works of Carlos Castaneda. Whatever the motivation behind the
"Prieure documents', it was clearly not financial gain. Indeed, money
seemed to be only an incidental factor, if a factor at all. Although
they would have proved extremely lucrative in book form, the most
important "Prieure documents' were not published as such. Despite
their commercial potential, they were confined to private printings,
limited editions and discreet deposition at the Bibliotheque Nationale
-where, for that matter, they were not even always available. And the
information that did appear in conventional book form was not haphazard or
arbitrary and for the most part it was not the work of independent researchers.
Most of it seemed to issue from a single source. Most of it was based on the
testimony of very specific informants, who measured out precise quantities of
new information as if with an eyedropper and according to some prearranged plan.
Each new fragment of information added at least one modification, one further
piece to the overall jigsaw. Many of these fragments were released under
different names. A superficial impression was thus conveyed of an array of
separate writers, each of whom confirmed and imparted credibility to the Others.
There appeared to us only one plausible motivation for such a procedure
to attract public attention to certain matters, to establish
credibility, to engender interest, to create a psychological climate or
atmosphere that kept people waiting ~with hated breath for new
revelations. In short, the "Prieure documents' seemed specifically
calculated to 'pave the way' for some astonishing disclosure. Whatever
this disclosure might eventually prove to be, it apparently dictated a
prolonged process of 'softening up' of preparing people. And whatever
this disclosure might eventually prove to be, it somehow involved the
Merovingian dynasty, the perpetuation of that dynasty's bloodline to
204
the present day and a clandestine kingship. Thus, in a magazine
article purportedly written by a member of the Prieure de Sion, we
found the following statement, "Without the Merovingians, the Prieure
de Sion would not exist, and without the
Prieure de Sion, the Merovingian dynasty would be extinct." The relationship between the
Order and the bloodline is partly clarified, partly further confused, by the following
elaboration:
The King is, shepherd and pastor at the same time. Sometimes he
dispatches some brilliant ambassador to his vassal in power, his
factotum, one who has the felicity of being subject to death. Thus
Rene d'Anjou, Connetable de
Bourbon, Nicolas Fouquet ... and numerous others for whom astonishing
success is followed by inexplicable disgrace for these emissaries are
both terrible and vulnerable. Custodians of a secret, one can only
exalt them or destroy them. Thus people like Gilles de Rais, Leonardo
da Vinci, Joseph
Balsamo, the dukes of Nevers and Gonzaga, whose wake is attended by a perfume of
magic in which sulphur is mingled with incense the perfume of the Magdalene.
If King Charles VII, on the entrance of Jeanne d'Arc into the great hall of his castle at
Chinon, hid himself among the throng of his courtiers, it was not for the sake of a frivolous
joke where was the humour in it? but because he already knew of whom she was the
ambassadress. And that, before her, he was scarcely more than one courtier among the
others. The secret she delivered to him in private was contained in these words:
"Gentle lord, I come on behalf of the King. '4
The implications of this passage are provocative and intriguing. One is that the King the
"Lost King', presumably of the Merovingian bloodline continues in effect to rule, simply by
virtue of who he is. Another, and perhaps even more startling, implication is that temporal
sovereigns are aware of his existence, acknowledge him, respect him and fear him. A
third implication is that the Grand Master of the Prieure de Sion, or some other member of
the Order, acts as ambassador between the "Lost King' and his temporal deputies or
surrogates.
205
And such ambassadors, it would seem, are deemed expendable.
Curious Pamphlets in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
In 1966 a curious exchange of letters occurred concerning the death of
Leo
Schidlof the man who, under the pseudonym of Henri Lobineau, was at
that time alleged to have composed the genealogies in some of the
"Prieure documents'. The first letter, which appeared in the Catholic
Weekly of
Geneva, is dated October 22nd, 1966. It is signed by one Lionel Burrus, who claims to
speak on behalf of an organisation called Swiss Christian Youth.
M. Burrus announces that Leo Schidlof, alias Henri Lobineau, died in
Vienna the week before, on October 17th. He then defends the deceased
against a slanderous attack which, he claims, appeared in a recent
Roman Catholic bulletin. M. Burrus registers his indignation at this
attack. In his eulogy on Schidlof he declares that the latter, under
the name of Lobineau, compiled, in 1956, 'a remarkable study.. . on
the genealogy of the
Merovingian kings and the affair of Rennes-leChateau'.
Rome, M. Burrus asserts, did not dare asperse Schidlof when he was alive, even though it
had a comprehensive dossier on the man and his activities.
But even now, despite his death, Merovingian interests continue to be
furthered. To support this contention, M. Burrus seems to wax more
than a little preposterous. He cites what, in 1966, was the emblem of
Antar, one of France's leading petrol companies. This emblem is said
to embody a
Merovingian device and depict, albeit in cartoon fashion, a Merovingian
king. And this emblem, according to M. Burrus, proves that information
and propaganda on behalf of the Merovingians is being effectively
disseminated; and even the French clergy, he adds with imperfect
relevance, do not always jump at the behest of the Vatican. As for Leo
Schidlof, M. Burrus concludes (with echoes of Freemasonry and Cathar
thought), "For all those who knew
Henri Lobineau, who was a great voyager and a great seeker, a loyal and
good man, he remains in our hearts as the symbol of a "maitre parfait",
206
whom one respects and venerates. "S This letter from Lionel Burrus
would seem distinctly cranky. Certainly it is extremely curious. More
curious still, however, is the alleged attack on
Schidlof in a Roman Catholic bulletin, from which M. Burrus quotes liberally. The bulletin,
according to M. Burrus, accuses Schidlof of being "pro-Soviet, a notorious Freemason
actively preparing the way for a popular monarchy in France'. 6 It is a singular and
seemingly contradictory accusation for one does not usually combine Soviet sympathies
with an attempt to establish a monarchy. And yet the bulletin, as M. Burrus claims to
quote it, makes charges that are even more extravagant:
The Merovingian descendants have always been behind all heresies,
from
Arianism, through the Cathars and the Templars, to Freemasonry. At the beginning of the
Protestant Reformation, Cardinal Mazarin, in July 1659, had their chateau of Barberie,
dating from the twelfth century, destroyed. For the house and family in question, all
through the centuries, had spawned nothing but secret agitators against the Church."
M. Burrus does not specifically identify the Roman Catholic bulletin in
which this quotation supposedly appeared, so we could not verify its
authenticity. If it is authentic, however, it would be of considerable
significance. It would constitute independent testimony, from Roman
Catholic sources, of the razing of Chateau Barberie in Nevers. It
would also seem to suggest at least a partial raison d'etre for the
Prieure de
Sion. We had already come to see Sion, and the families associated with it, as
manoeuvring for power on their own behalf and in the process repeatedly clashing with
the Church. According to the above quotation, however, opposition to the Church would
not seem to have been a matter of chance, circumstances or even politics. On the
contrary it would seem to have been a matter of on-going policy. This confronted us with
another contradiction. For the statutes of the Prieure de Sion had issued, at least
ostensibly, from a staunchly Catholic institution.
Not long after the publication of this letter, Lionel Burrus was killed
in a car accident which claimed six other victims as well. Shortly
207
before his death, however, his letter elicited a response even more
curious and provocative than that which he himself had written. This
response was published as a privately printed pamphlet under the name
of S. Roux.e
In certain respects S. Roux's text would appear to echo the original attack on Schidlof
which prompted M. Burrus's letter. It also chastises M. Burrus for being young, over-
zealous, irresponsible and prone to talk too much.
But while seeming to condemn M. Burrus's position, not only does S.
Roux's pamphlet confirm his facts, but it actually elaborates on them.
Leo
Schidlof, S. Roux affirms, was a dignitary of the Swiss Grande Loge Alpina the Masonic
lodge whose imprint appeared on certain of the "Prieure documents'. According to S.
Roux, Schidlof 'did not conceal his sentiments of friendship for the Eastern Bloc'." As for
M.
Burrus's statements about the Church, S. Roux continues:
one cannot say that the Church is ignorant of the line of the Razes,
but it must be remembered that all its descendants, since Dagobert,
have been secret agitators against both the royal line of France and
against the
Church and that they have been the source of all heresies. The return of a Merovingian
descendant to power would entail for France the proclamation of a popular monarchy
allied to the USSR, and the triumph of Freemasonry in short, the disappearance of
religious freedom."
If all of this sounds rather extraordinary, the concluding statements of S. Roux's pamphlet
are even more so:
As for the question of Merovingian propaganda in France, everyone knows
that the publicity of Antar Petrol, with a Merovingian king holding a
Lily and a Circle, is a popular appeal in favour of returning the
Merovingians to power. And one cannot but wonder what Lobineau was
preparing at the time of his decease in Vienna, on the eve of profound
changes in Germany. Is it not also true that Lobineau prepared in
Austria a future reciprocal accord with
France? Was not this the basis of the Franco-Russian accord?"
Not surprisingly we were utterly bewildered, wondering what the devil S. Roux was talking
about; if anything, he appeared to have outdone M.
208
Burrus in nonsense. Like the bulletin M. Burrus had attacked, S. Roux
links together political objectives as apparently diverse and
discordant as Soviet hegemony and popular monarchy. He goes further
than M. Burrus by declaring that "everyone knows' the emblem of a
petrol company to be a subtle form of propaganda for an unknown and
apparently ludicrous cause. He hints at sweeping changes in
France, Germany and Austria as if these changes were already 'on the cards', if not
indeed faits accomplis. And he speaks of a mysterious "Franco-Russian' accord as if this
accord were a matter of public knowledge.
On first reading S. Roux's pamphlet appeared to make no sense whatever. A closer
scrutiny convinced us that it was, in fact, another ingenious "Prieure document'deliberately
calculated to mystify, to confuse, to tease, to sow hints of something portentous and
monumental. In any case it offered, in its wildly eccentric way, an intimation of the
magnitude of the issues involved. If S. Roux was correct the subject of our inquiry was
not confined to the activities of some elusive but innocuous latter-day chivalric order. If S.
Roux was correct the subject of our inquiry pertained in some way to the upper echelons
of high-level international politics.
The Catholic Traditionalists
In 1977 a new and particularly significant "Prieure document' appeared a six-page
pamphlet entitled Le Cercle d'Ulysse written by one jean Delaude.
In the course of his text the writer addresses himself explicitly to
the
Prieure de Sion. And although he rehashes much older material, he also furnishes certain
new details about the Order:
In March 1 177 Baudouin was compelled, at Saint Leonard d'Acre, to
negotiate and prepare the constitution of the Order of the Temple,
under the directives of the Prieure de Sion. In 1 1 1 8 the Order of the
Temple was then established by Hugues de Payen. From 1 1 1 8 to 1 1 88 the
Prieure de Sion and the Order of the Temple shared the same Grand
Masters. Since the separation of the two institutions in 1 188, the
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Prieure de Sion had counted twenty-seven Grand Masters to the present
day. The most recent were:
Charles Nodierfrom 1801 to 1844
Victor Hugo from 1844 to 1885
Claude Debussyfrom 1885 to 1918
Jean Cocteau from 1918 to 1963
and from 1963 until the advent of the new order, the Abbe Ducaud-Bourget.
For what is the Pieure de Sion preparing? I do not know, but it
represents a power capable of confronting the Vatican in the days to
come. Monsignor
Lefebvre is a most active and redoubtable member, capable of saying:
"You make me Pope and I will make you King, "z
There are two important new fragments of information in this extract.
One is the alleged affiliation with the Prieure de Sion of Archbishop
Marcel
Lefebvre. Monsignor Lefebvre, of course, represents the extreme conservative wing of
the Roman Catholic Church. He was vociferously outspoken against Pope Paul VI, whom
he flagrantly and flamboyantly defied.
In 1976 and 1977, in fact, he was explicitly threatened with excommunication; and his
brazen indifference to this threat nearly precipitated a full-scale ecclesiastical schism. But
how could we reconcile a militant 'hard-line' Catholic like Monsignor Lefebvre with a
movement and an Order that was Hermetic, if not downright heretical, in orientation?
There seemed to be no explanation for this contradiction: unless
Monsignor
Lefebvre was a modern-day representative of the nineteenth-century
Freemasonry associated with the Hieron du Val d'Or the "Christian, aristocratic and
Hermetic Freemasonry' which presumed to regard itself as more Catholic than the pope.
The second major point in the extract quoted above is, of course, the
identification of the Prieure de Sion's Grand Master at that time as
Abbe
Ducaud-Bourget. Francois Ducaud-Bourget was born in 1897 and trained for the
priesthood at predictably enough the Seminary of Saint Sulpice.
He is thus likely to have known many of the Modernists there at the
time and, quite possibly, Emile Hoffet. Subsequently he was Conventual
Chaplain of the Sovereign Order of Malta. For his activities during
210
the Second World War he received the Resistance Medal and the Croix de
Guerre.
Today he is recognised as a distinguished man of letters a member of
the
Academie Francaise, a biographer of important French Catholic writers
like
Paul Claudel and Francois Mauriac, and a highly esteemed poet in his own right.
Like Monsignor Lefebvre the Abbe Ducaud-Bourget assumed a stance of militant
opposition to Pope Paul V1 . Like Monsignor Lefebvre he is an adherent of the Tridentine
Mass. Like Monsignor Lefebvre he has proclaimed himself a "traditionalist', adamantly
opposed to ecclesiastical reform or any attempt to "modernise' Roman Catholicism.
On May 22nd, 1976 he was forbidden to administer confession or
absolution and, like Monsignor
Lefebvre, he boldly defied the interdict imposed on him by his superiors.
On February 27th, 1977 he led a thousand Catholic traditionalists in their occupation of the
Church of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet in Paris.
If Marcel Lefebvre and Francois Ducaud-Bourget appear to be
'right-wing' theologically, they would seem to be equally so
politically. Before the
Second World War, Monsignor Lefebvre was associated with Action Franqaise the
extreme right of French politics at the time, which shared certain attitudes in common with
National Socialism in Germany. More recently the "rebel archbishop' attracted
considerable notoriety by warmly endorsing the military regime in Argentina. When
questioned on this position, he replied that he had made a mistake. He had not meant
Argentina, he said, but Chile!
Francois Ducaud-Bourget would not appear to be quite so extreme; and
his medals, at any rate, attest to patriotic anti-German activity
during the war. Nevertheless he has expressed a high regard for
Mussolini, and the hope that France would "recover its sense of values
under the guidance of a new Napoleon' ."3
Our first suspicion was that Marcel Lefebvre and Frani~ois
Ducaud-Bourget were not, in fact, affiliated with the Prieure de Sion
at all, but that someone had deliberately attempted to embarrass them
by aligning them with the very forces they would, in theory, most
vigorously oppose. And yet according to the statutes we had obtained
211
from the French police, the subtitle of the Prieure de Sion was
Chevalerie d'lnstitutions et Regies Catholiques; d'Union
Independante et Traditionaliste. An institution with such a name might very well
accommodate individuals like Marcel Lefebvre and Franpois Ducaud Bourget.
There seemed to us a second possible explanation a far-fetched
explanation admittedly, but one that would at least account for the
contradiction confronting us. Perhaps Marcel Lefebvre and Franqois
Ducaud-Bourget were not what they appeared to be. Perhaps they were something else.
Perhaps, in actuality, they were agents provocateurs whose objective was systematically
to create turmoil, sow dissent, foment an incipient schism that threatened Pope Paul's
pontificate. Such tactics would be in keeping with the secret societies described by
Charles Nodier, as well as with the Protocols of the Elders of Sion. And a number of
recent commentators -journalists as well as ecclesiastical authorities have declared
Archbishop Lefebvre to be working for, or manipulated by, someone else."
Far-fetched though our hypothesis might be, there was a coherent logic underlying it. If
Pope Paul were regarded as 'the enemy', and one wished to force him into a more liberal
position, how would one go about it? Not by agitating from a liberal point of view. That
would only have entrenched the pope more firmly in his conservatism. But what if one
publicly adopted a position even more rabidly conservative than Paul's? Would this not,
despite his wishes to the contrary, force him into an increasingly liberal position? And
that, certainly is what Archbishop Lefebvre and his colleagues accomplished the
unprecedented feat of casting the pope as a liberal.
Whether our conclusions were valid or not, it seemed clear that
Archbishop
Lefebvre, like so many other individuals in our investigation, was privy to some
momentous and explosive secret. In 1976, for example, his excommunication seemed
imminent. The press, indeed, was expecting it any day, for Pope Paul, confronted by
brazen and repeated defiance, seemed to have no alternative. And yet, at the very last
minute, the pope backed down. It is still unclear precisely why he did so: but the following
excerpt from the Guardian, dated August 30th, 1976, suggests a clue:
212
The Archbishop's team of priests in England .. . believe that their
leader still has a powerful ecclesiastical weapon to use in his dispute
with the Vatican. No one will give any hint of its nature, but Father
Peter
Morgan, the group's leader .. . describes it as being something
"earth-shaking'. "5
What kind of "earth-shaking' matter or 'secret weapon' could thus
intimidate the Vatican? What kind of Damoclean sword, invisible to the
world at large, could have been held over the pontiff's head? Whatever
it was, it certainly seems to have proved effective. It seems, in
fact, to have rendered the archbishop wholly immune to punitive action
from Rome. As
Jean Delaude wrote, Marcel Lefebvre did indeed seem to 'represent a power capable of
confronting the Vatican' head-on, if necessary.
But to whom did he or will he allegedly say: "You make me Pope and I will make you
King'?
The Convent of 1981 and Cocteau's Statutes
More recently, some of the issues surrounding Francois Ducaud-Bourget seem to have
been clarified. This clarification has resulted from a sudden glare of publicity which the
Prieure de Sion, during late 1980 and early 1981, has received in France. This publicity
has made it something of a household name.
In August 1980 the popular magazine Bonne Soiree a kind of amalgam
between a British Sunday supplement and the American TV Guide published
a two-part feature on the mystery of Rennes-leChateau and the Prieure
de
Sion. In this feature both Marcel Lefebvre and Francois Ducaud-Bourget
are explicitly linked with Sion. Both are said to have paid a special
visit fairly recently to one of Sion's sacred sites, the village of
Sainte-Colombe in Nevers, where the Plantard domain of Chateau Barberie was situated
before its destruction by Cardinal Mazarin in 1659.
By this time we ourselves had established both telephone and postal
contact with the Abbe DucaudBourget. He proved courteous enough. But
his answers to most of our questions were vague, if not evasive; and,
213
not surprisingly, he disavowed all affiliation with the Prieure de
Sion. This disavowal was reiterated in a letter which, shortly thereafter, he addressed to
Bonne Soiree.
On January 22nd, 1 981 , a short article appeared in the French press, "s of which it is worth
quoting the greater part:
A veritable secret society of 121 dignitaries, the Prieure de Sion,
founded by Godfroi de Bouillon in Jerusalem in 1099, has numbered among
its Grand
Masters Leonardo da Vinci, Victor Hugo and Jean Cocteau. This Order convened its
Convent at Blois on 1 7 January, 1 981 (the previous Convent dating from 5 June 1 956, in
Paris).
As a result of this recent Convent at Blois, Pierre Plantard de
Saint-Clair was elected Grand Master of the Order by 83 out of 92 votes on the third
ballot.
This choice of Grand Master marks a decisive step in the evolution of
the
Order's conception and spirit in relation to the world; for the 121
dignitaries of the Prieure de Sion are all eminences grises of high
finance and of international political or philosophical societies;
and
Pierre Plantard is the direct descendant, through Dagobert II, of the
Merovingian kings. His descent has been proved legally by the parchments of Queen
Blanche of Castile, discovered by the Abbe Sauniere in his church at Rennes-leChateau
(Rude) in 1891.
These documents were sold by the priest's niece in 1965 to Captain
Roland
Stanmore and Sir Thomas Frazer, and were deposited in a safe-deposit box of Lloyds
Bank Europe Limited of London."
Shortly before this item appeared in the press, we had written to Philippe de Cherisey,
with whom we had already established contact and whose name figured as frequently as
Pierre Plantard's as a spokesman for the Prieure de Sion. In reply to one of the questions
we asked him, M. de Cherisey declared that Franpois DucaudBourget had not been
elected Grand Master by a proper quorum. Moreover, he added, the Abbe Ducaud-
Bourget had publicly repudiated his affiliation with the Order.
This latter assertion seemed unclear. It made more sense, however, in
the context of something M. de
214
Cherisey enclosed in his letter. Some time before, we had obtained,
from the Sub Prefecture of Saint-Julien, the statutes of the Prieure de
Sion. A copy of these same statutes had been published in 1973 by a
French magazine." However, we had been told in
Paris by jean-Luc Chaumeil that these statutes were fraudulent. In his
letter to us M. de Cherisey enclosed a copy of what were said to be
the
Prieure de Sion's true statutes translated from the Latin. These statutes bore the
signature of jean Cocteau; and unless it had been executed by an extremely skilful forger,
the signature was authentic. We certainly could not distinguish it from other specimens of
Cocteau's signature. And on this basis, we are inclined to accept the statutes to which the
signature is appended as genuine. "9 They are set out below:
ARTICLE ONE There is formed, between the undersigned to this present constitution and
those who shall subsequently join and fulfill the following conditions, an initiatory order of
chivalry, whose usages and customs rest upon the foundation made by Godfroi VI, called
the Pious, Due de Bouillon, at Jerusalem in 1099 and recognised in 1 100.
ARTICLE Two The Order is called "Sionis Prioratus' or "Prieure de Sion'.
ARTICLE THREE The Prieure de Sion has as its objectives the perpetuation of the
traditionalist order of chivalry, its initiatory teaching and the creation between members of
mutual assistance, as much moral as material, in all circumstances.
ARTICLE FOUR The duration of the Prieure de Sion is unlimited.
ARTICLE FIVE The Prieure de Sion adopts, as its representative office, the domicile of
the Secretary General named by the Convent. The Prieure de Sion is not a secret
society. All its decrees, as well as its records and appointments, are available to the
public in Latin text.
ARTICLE SIX The Prieure de Sion comprises 121 members. Within these
limits, it is open to all adult persons who recognise its aims and
215
accept the obligations specified in this present constitution. Members are admitted without
regard to sex, race or philosophical, religious or political ideas.
ARTICLE SEVEN Nevertheless, in the event that a member should designate in writing
one of his descendants to succeed him, the Convent shall accede to this request and
may, if necessary in the case of minority, undertake the education of the above
designated.
ARTICLE EIGHT A future member must provide, for his induction to the first grade, a
white robe with cord, at his own expense. From the time of his admission to the first
grade, the member holds the right to vote. On admission, the new member must swear to
serve the Order in all circumstances, as well as to work for PEACE and the respect of
human life.
ARTICLE NINE On his admission, the member must pay a token fee, the amount being
discretionary. Each year, he must forward to the Secretariat General a voluntary
contribution to the Order of a sum to be decided by himself.
ARTICLE TEN On admission, the member must provide a birth certificate and a specimen
of his signature.
ARTICLE ELEVEN A member of the Prieure de Sion against whom a sentence has been
pronounced by a tribunal for a common-law offence may be suspended from his duties
and titles, as well as his membership.
ARTICLE TWELVE The general assembly of members is designated the Convent.
No deliberation of Convent shall be deemed valid if the number of members present is
less than eighty-one. The vote is secret and is cast by means of white and black balls. To
be adopted, all motions must receive eighty-one white balls. All motions not receiving
sixty-one white balls in a vote may not be re-submitted.
ARTICLE THIRTEEN The Convent of the Prieure de Sion alone decides, on a majority of
81 votes out of 121 members, all changes to the constitution and the internal regulation of
ceremonial.
216
ARTICLE FOURTEEN All admissions shall be decided by the "Council of
the thirteen Rose-Croix'. Titles and duties shall be conferred by the
Grand
Master of the Prieure de Sion. Members are admitted to their office for life. Their titles
revert by right to one of their children chosen by themselves without consideration of sex.
The child thus designated may make an act of renunciation of his rights, but he cannot
make this act in favour of a brother, sister, relative or any other person. He may not be
readmitted to the Prieure de Sion.
ARTICLE FIFTEEN Within twenty-seven full days, two members shall be required to
contact a future member to obtain his assent or his renunciation. In default of a deed of
217
acceptance after a period of reflection of eighty-one full days, renunciation shall be legally
218
219
ARTICLE SIXTEEN By virtue of hereditary right confirmed by the preceding articles, the
duties and titles of Grand Master of the Prieure de Sion shall be transmitted to his
successor according to the same prerogatives. In the case of a vacancy in the office of
Grand Master, and the absence of a direct successor, the Convent must proceed to an
election within eighty one days.
ARTICLE SEVENTEEN All decrees must be voted by Convent and receive
validation by the Seal of the Grand Master. The Secretary-General is
named by Convent for three years, renewable by tacit consent. The
Secretary-General must be of the grade of Commander to undertake his duties.
The functions and duties are unpaid.
ARTICLE EIGHTEEN The hierarchy of the Prieure de Sion is composed of five grades:
1st Nautonnier number:1 Arche of the 2nd Croise number:313 Rose-Croix
3rd Commandeur number:9 4th Chevalier number: 27The nine 5th Ecuyer
220
number:81commanderies total number: 121 of the Temple ARTICLE NINETEEN
There are 243 Free Brothers, called Preux or, since the year 1681, Enfants de Saint
Vincent who participate neither in the vote nor in Convents, but to whom the Prieure de
Sion accordg certain rights and privileges in conformity witht the decree of January 17th,
1681.
ARTICLE TWENTY The funds of the Prieure de Sion are composed of gifts and fees of
members. A reserve, called the 'patrimony of the Order', is settled upon the Council of the
thirteen Rose-Croix. This treasure may only be used in case of absolute necessity and
grave danger to the Prieure and its members.
ARTICLE TWENTY-ONE The Convent is convoked by the Secretary-General when the
Council of the Rose-Croix deems it useful.
ARTICLE TWENTY-TWO Disavowal of membership in the Prieure de Sion, manifested
publicly and in writing, without cause or personal danger, shall incur exclusion of the
member, which shall be pronounced by the Convent.
Text of the constitution in XXII articles, conforming to the original and to the modifications
of the Convent of June 5th , 1 956.
Signature of the Grand Master
JEAN COCTEAU
In certain details, these statutes are at odds both with the statutes we received from the
French police and with the information relating to Sion in the "Prieure documents'. The
latter shows a total membership of 1 ,093, the former of 9,841 . According to the articles
quoted above, Sion's total membership, including the 243 "Children of Saint Vincent', is
only 364. The "Prieure documents', moreover, establish a hierarchy of seven grades. In
the statutes we received from the French police, this hierarchy has been expanded to
nine. According to the articles quoted above, there are only five grades in the hierarchy.
And the specific appellations of these grades differ from those in the two previous sources
as well.
221
These contradictions might well be evidence of some sort of schism, or
incipient schism, within the Prieure de Sion, dating from around 1956
when the "Prieure documents' first began to appear in the
Bibliotheque Nationale. And indeed, Philippe de Cherisey alludes to
just such a schism in a recent article. z It occurred between 1956 and
1958, he says, and threatened to assume the proportions of the rift
between Sion and the Order of the Temple in 1 188 the rift marked by the
"cutting of the elm'. According to M. de Cherisey, the schism was
averted by the diplomatic skill of M. Plantard, who brought the
potential defectors back into the fold. In any case, and whatever the
internal politics of the Prieure de
Sion, the Order, as of the January 1981 Convent, would seem to constitute a unified and
coherent whole.
If FranQois Ducaud-Bourgetwas the Prieure de Sion's Grand Master, it would appear
clear that he is not so at present. M. de Cherisey declared that he had not been elected
by the requisite quorum. This may mean that he was elected by the incipient schismatics.
It is uncertain whether he is subject to or in violation of Article Twenty Two of the statutes.
We may assume that his affiliation with Sion whatever it may have been in the past no
longer exists. '
The statutes quoted might seem to clarify the status of Francois
Ducaud-Bourget. They make clear, anyway, the principle of selection
governing the Prieure de Sion's Grand Masters. It is now
comprehensible why there should have been Grand Masters aged five or
eight. It is also comprehensible why the Grand Mastership should move,
as it does, in and out of a particular bloodline and network of
interlinked genealogies. In principle, the title would seem to be
hereditary, transmitted down the centuries through an intertwined
cluster of families all claiming
Merovingian descent. When there was no eligible claimant, however, or
when the designated claimant declined the status offered him, the
Grand
Mastership, presumably in accordance with the procedures outlined in
the statutes, was conferred on a chosen outsider. It would be on this
basis that individuals like Leonardo, Newton, Nodier and Cocteau found
222
their way on to the list. M. Plantard de Saint-Clair
Among the names that figured most prominently and recurrently in the
various
"Prieure documents' was that of the Plantard family. And among the
numerous individuals associated with the mystery of Sauniere and
Rennes-leChateau, the most authoritative seemed to be Pierre Plantard
de Saint-Clair .z'
According to the genealogies in the "Prieure documents', M. Plantard is a lineal
descendant of King Dagobert II and the Merovingian dynasty.
According to the same genealogies, he is also a lineal descendant of
the owners of
Chateau Barberie, the property destroyed by Cardinal Mazarin in 1659.
Throughout the course of the inquiry we had repeatedly encountered M.
Plantard's name. Indeed, so far as release of information during the
last twenty-five years or so was concerned, all trails seemed to lead
ultimately to him. In 1960, for example, he was interviewed by Gerard
de Sede and spoke of an "international secret' concealed at Gisors.zz
During the subsequent decade he seems to have been a major source of
information for
M. de Sede's books on both Gisors and Rennes-leChateau .z3 According to
recent disclosures, M. Plantard's grandfather was a personal
acquaintance of Berenger Sauniere. And M. Plantard himself proved to
own a number of tracts of land in the vicinity of Rennes-leChateau and
Rennes-les-Bains, including the mountain of Blanchefort. When we
interviewed the town antiquarian at Stenay, in the Arennes, we were
told that the site of the
Old Church of Saint Dagobert was also owned by M. Plantard. And according to the
statutes we obtained from the French police, M. Plantard was listed as Secretary General
of the Prieure de Sion.
In 1973 a French magazine published what seems to have been the transcript of a
telephone interview with M. Plantard. Not surprisingly he did not give very much away.
As might be expected, his statements were allusive, cryptic and provocative raising, in
fact, more questions than they answered.
Thus, for example, when speaking of the Merovingian bloodline and its
royal claims, he declared, "You must explore the origins of certain
great French families, and you will then comprehend how a personage
named Henri de
223
Montpezat could one day become king. 'z4 And when asked the
objectives of the Prieure de Sion, M. Plantard replied in a manner whose evasiveness was
predictable, "I cannot tell you that. The society to which I am attached is extremely
ancient. I merely succeed others, a point in a sequence. We are guardians of certain
things.
And without publicity. 125
The same French magazine also published a character sketch of M.
Plantard, written by his first wife, Anne Lea Hisler, who died in 1971 .
If the magazine is to be believed, this sketch first appeared in
Circuit, the
Prieure de Sion's own internal publication for which M. Plantard is said to have written
regularly under the pseudonym of "Chyren':
Let us not forget that this psychologist was the friend of personages
as diverse as Comte Israel Monti, one of the brothers of the Holy Vehm,
Gabriel
Trarieux d'Egmont, one of the thirteen members of the Rose-Croix,
Paul
Lecour, the philosopher on Atlantis, the Abbe Hoffet of the Service
of
Documentation of the Vatican, Th. Moreaux, the director of the Conservatory at Bourges,
etc. Let us remember that during the Occupation, he was arrested, suffered torture by the
Gestapo and was interned as a political prisoner for long months. In his capacity of doctor
of arcane sciences, he learned to appreciate the value of secret information, which no
doubt led to his receiving the title of honorary member in several hermetic societies.
All this has gone to form a singular personage, a mystic of peace, an apostle of liberty, an
ascetic whose ideal is to serve the well-being of humanity. Is it astonishing therefore that
he should become one of the eminences grises from whom the great of this world seek
counsel?
Invited in 1947 by the Federal Government of Switzerland, he resided
for several years there, near Lake Uman, where numerous charges de
missions and delegates from the entire world are gathered .26
Madame Hisler undoubtedly intended this to be a glowing portrait. What emerges,
however, is the sense of an individual more singular than anything else. In some places
Madame Hisler's language becomes both vague and hyperbolic. Moreover, the diverse
people listed as M.
Plantard's distinguished acquaintances are, to say the least, a fairly
224
odd lot. On the other hand, M. Plantard's contretemps with the
Gestapo would seem to point to some laudable activity during the
Occupation. And our own researches eventually yielded documentary
evidence. As early as 1941 Pierre
Plantard had begun editing the resistance journal Vaincre, published in
a suburb of Paris. He was imprisoned by the Gestapo for more than a
year, from October 1943 until the end of 1944.2'
M. Plantard's friends and associates proved to include individuals
rather better known than those listed by Madame Hisler. They included
Andre
Malraux and Charles de Gaulle. Indeed M. Plantard's connections
apparently extended well into the corridors of power. In 1958, for
example, Algeria rose in revolt and General de Gaulle sought to be
returned to the
Presidency of France. He seems to have turned specifically to M.
Plantard for aid. M. Plantard, together with Andre Malraux and others,
seems to have responded by mobil ising the socalled "Committees of
Public Safety' which played a critical role in returning de Gaulle to
the Hysee Palace. In a letter dated July 29th, 1958, de Gaulle
personally thanked M. Plantard for his services. In a second letter,
dated five days later, the General requested of M. Pllntard that the
committees, having attained their objective, be disbanded. By an
official communique in the press and on the radio, M. Plantard
dissolved the committees .21 1
Needless to say, we became increasingly anxious, as our research progressed, to make
M. Plantard's acquaintance. There did not at first seem much likelihood of our doing so,
however. M. Plantard appeared to be untraceable, and there seemed no way whereby
we, as private individuals, could possibly locate him. Then, during the early spring of
1979, we embarked on another film about Rennes-leChateau for the BBC, who placed
their resources at our disposal. It was under the auspices of the BBC that we at last
managed to establish contact with M. Plantard and the Prieure de Sion.
Initial inquiries were undertaken by an Englishwoman, a journalist
living in Paris, who had worked on various projects for the BBC and had
acquired an imposing network of connections throughout France, through
225
which she attempted to find the Prieure de Sion. At first, pursuing
her quest through Masonic lodges and the Parisian esoteric "sub-culture', she
encountered a predictable smoke-screen of mystification and contradiction.
One journalist warned her, for example, that anyone probing Sion too
closely sooner or later got killed. Another journalist told her that
Sion had indeed existed during the Middle Ages, but no longer did
today. An official of
Grande Loge Alpina, on the other hand, reported that Sion did exist today but was a
modern organisation it had never, he said, existed in the past.
Threading her way through this welter of confusion, our researcher at last established
contact with jean-Luc Chaumeil who had interviewed M. Plantard for a magazine and
written extensively on Sauniere, Rennes-le Chateau and the Prieure de Sion. He was not
himself a member of Sion, M. Chaumeil said, but he could contact M. Plantard and
possibly arrange a meeting with us. In the meantime, he provided our researcher with
additional fragments of information.
According to M. Chaumeil the Prieure de Sion was not, strictly speaking, a "secret
society'. It merely wished to be discreet about its existence, its activities and its
membership. The entry in the Journal Officiel, M. Chaumeil declared, was spurious,
placed there by certain "defecting members' of the Order. According to M. Chaumeil, the
statutes registered with the police were also spurious, issuing from the same 'defecting
members'.
M. Chaumeil confirmed our suspicions that Sion entertained ambitious political plans for
the near future. Within a few years, he asserted, there would be a dramatic change in the
French Government a change that would pave the way for a popular monarchy with a
Merovingian ruler on the throne.
And Sion, he asserted further, would be behind this change as it had been behind
numerous other important changes for centuries. According to M. Chaumeil, Sion was
anti-materialistic and intent on presiding over a restoration of "true values' values it would
appear, of a spiritual, perhaps esoteric character. These values, M. Chaumeil explained,
were ultimately pre-Christian despite Sion's ostensibly Christian orientation, despite the
Catholic emphasis in the statutes.
226
M. Chaumeil also reiterated that Sion's Grand Master at that time was
Franpois Ducaud-Bourget. When asked how the latter's
Catholic traditionalism could be reconciled with pre-Christian values, M. Chaumeil replied
cryptically that we would have to ask the Abbe Ducaud Bourget himself.
M. Chaumeil emphasised the antiquity of the Prieure de Sion, as well as the breadth of its
membership. It included, he said, members from all spheres of life. Its objectives, he
added, were not exclusively confined to restoring the Merovingian bloodline. And at this
point, M.
Chaumeil made a very curious statement to our researcher. Not all
members of the Prieure de
Sion, he said, were Jewish. The implication of this apparent non
sequitur is obvious that some members of the Order, if not indeed many,
are
Jewish. And again we were confronted with a baffling contradiction. Even if the statutes
were spurious, how could we reconcile an Order with Jewish membership and a Grand
Master who embraced extreme Catholic traditionalism and whose close friends included
Marcel Lefebvre, a man known for statements verging on antiSemitism?
M. Chaumeil made other perplexing statements as well. He spoke, for
Merovingian bloodline and whose 'sacred mission was therefore obvious'.
This assertion is all the more baffling in that there is no known
Prince of
Lorraine today, not even a titular one. Was M. Chaumeil implying that such a Prince did
actually exist, living perhaps incognito? Or did he mean 'prince' in the broader sense of
'scion'? In that case, the present prince (as opposed to Prince) of Lorraine is Dr. Otto von
Habsburg, who is titular duke of Lorraine.
On the whole, M. Chaumeil's answers were less answers than they were bases for further
questions and our researcher, in the short time of preparation allowed her, did not know
precisely which questions to ask.
She made considerable headway, however, by stressing the BBC's interest
in the matter; for the BBC, on the continent, enjoys considerably more
prestige than it does in Britain and is still a name to be conjured
with. In consequence the prospect of BBC involvement was not to be
taken lightly. "Propaganda' is too strong a word, but a BBC film which
227
emphasised and authenticated certain facts would certainly have been
attractive a powerful means of gaining credence and creating a
psychological climate or atmosphere, especially in the
English-speaking world. If the Merovingians and the Prieure de Sion became accepted as
'historical givens' or generally acknowledged facts like, say, the Battle of Hastings or the
murder of Thomas a Becket this would patently have been to Sion's advantage. It was
undoubtedly such considerations that prompted M. Chaumeil to telephone M. Plantard.
Eventually, in March 1979, with our BBC producer, Roy Davies, and his researcher
functioning as liaison, a meeting was arranged between M. Plantard and ourselves.
When it occurred, it had something of the character of a meeting between Mafia
godfathers. It was held on 'neutral ground' in a Paris cinema rented by the BBC for the
occasion, and all parties were accompanied by an entourage.
M. Plantard proved to be a dignified, courteous man of discreetly aristocratic bearing,
unostentatious in appearance, with a gracious, volatile but soft-spoken manner. He
displayed enormous erudition and impressive nimbleness of mind a gift for dry, witty,
mischievous but not in any way barbed repartee. There was frequently a gently amused,
indulgent twinkle in his eyes, an almost avuncular quality. For all his modest, unassertive
manner, he exercised an imposing authority over his companions.
And there was a marked quality of asceticism and austerity about him. He did not flaunt
any wealth. His apparel was conservative, tasteful, insouciantly informal, but neither
ostentatiously elegant nor manifestly expensive. As far as we could gather, he did not
even drive a car.
At our first, and two subsequent meetings with him, M. Plantard made it
clear to us that he would say nothing whatever about the Prieure de
Sion's activities or objectives at the present time. On the other hand
he offered to answer any questions we might have about the Order's past
history. And although he refused to discuss the future in any public
statements on film, for example -he did vouchsafe us a few hints in
conversation. He declared, for example, that the Prieure de Sion did
in fact hold the lost treasure of the Temple of Jerusalem the booty
plundered by Titus's Roman legions in A.D. 70. These items he stated,
228
would be' returned to Israel when the time is right'. But whatever
the historical, archaeological or even political significance of this treasure, M. Plantard
dismissed it as incidental. The true treasure, he insisted, was 'spiritual'. And he implied
that this 'spiritual treasure' consisted, at least in part, of a secret. In some unspecified way
the secret in question would facilitate a major social change. M. Plantard echoed M.
Chaumeil in stating that, in the near future, there would be a dramatic upheaval in France
not a revolution, but a radical change in French institutions which would pave the way for
the reinstatement of a monarchy. This assertion was not made with any prophetic
histrionics. On the contrary, M. Plantard simply assured us of it, very quietly, very matter-
of-factly and very definitively.
In M. Plantard's discourse there were certain curious inconsistencies.
At times, for instance, he seemed to be speaking on behalf of the
Prieure de
Sion he would say "we' and thereby indicate the Order. At other times, he would seem to
dissociate himself from the Order would speak of himself, alone, as a Merovingian
claimant, a rightful king, and Sion as his allies or supporters. We seemed to be hearing
two quite distinct voices which were not always compatible. One was the voice of Sion's
Secretary-General.
The other was the voice of an incognito king who "rules but does not govern' and who
regarded Sion as one might a sort of privy council. This dichotomy between the two
voices was never satisfactorily resolved, and M. Plantard could not be prevailed upon to
clarify it.
After three meetings with M. Plantard and his associates, we were not
significantly wiser than we had been before. Apart from the Committees
of
Public Safety and the letters from Charles de Gaulle, we received no
indication of Sion's political influence or power, or that the men we
had met were in any position to transform the government and
institutions of
France. And we received no indication of why the Merovingian
bloodline
Should be taken any more seriously than the various attempts to restore
any other royal dynasty. There are several Stuart claimants to the
British throne, for example and their claims, at least so far as modern
historians are concerned, rest on a more solid basis than that of the
Merovingians. For that matter, there are numerous other claimants to
229
vacant crowns and thrones throughout Europe; and there are surviving
members of the Bourbon, Habsburg, Hohenzollern and Romanov dynasties.
Why should they be accorded any less credibility than the Merovingians?
In terms of "absolute legitimacy', and from a purely technical point of
view, the
Merovingian claim might indeed take precedence. But the matter would still appear to be
academic in the modern world as academic, say, as a contemporary Irishman proving
descent from the High Kings of Tara.
Again we considered dismissing the Prieur6 de Sion as a minor 'lunatic
fringe' sect, if not an outright hoax. And yet all our own research
had indicated that the Order, in the past, had had real power and been
involved in matters of high-level international import. Even today
there was clearly more to it than met the eye. There was nothing
mercenary about it, for example, or exploitative in any way. Had M
Plantard so desired, he could have turned the Prieure de Sion into an
extremely lucrative affair like many other fashionable "new age' cults,
sects and institutions. Yet most of the seminal "Prieure documents'
remained confined to private printings. And
Sion itself did not solicit recruits not even in the way that a Masonic lodge might. Its
membership, as far as we could determine, remained rigorously fixed at a precise number,
and new members were admitted only as vacancies occurred. Such 'exclusiveness'
attested, among other things, to an extraordinary self-confidence, a certainty that it simply
did not need to enrol swarms of novices for financial gain or any other reason. In other
words, it already "had something going for it' something that seems to have enlisted the
allegiance of men like Malraux and de Gaulle. But could we seriously believe that men
like Malraux and de Gaulle were intent on restoring the Merovingian bloodline?
The Politics of the Prieure de Sion
In 1973 a book was published entitled Les Dessous dune ambition
politique ("The Undercurrents of a Political Ambition'). This book,
written by a Swiss journalist named Mathieu Paoli, recounts the
230
author's exhaustive attempts to investigate the Prieure de Sion. Like
us, M. Paoli eventually established contact with a representative of the Order whom he
does not identify by name. But M. Paoli did not have the prestige of the BBC behind him,
and the representative he met if we can gauge by his account would seem to have been
of lesser status than M. Plantard. Nor was this representative as communicative as M.
Plantard was with us. At the same time, M. Paoli, being based on the
continent and enjoying a greater mobility than we do, was able to
pursue certain leads and undertake "on the spot' research in a way that
we could not. As a result his book was extremely valuable and contains
much new information so much, in fact, that it appeared to warrant a
sequel, and we wondered why M. Paoli had not written one. When we
inquired about him, we were told that in 1977 or 1978 he had been shot
as a spy by the
Israeli government for attempting to sell certain secrets to the Arabs.
29
M. Paoli's approach, as he describes it in his book, was in many
respects similar to our own. He too contacted the daughter of Leo
Schidlof in
London; and he too was told by Miss Schidlof that her father, to her
knowledge, had no connection whatever with secret societies,
Freemasonry or
Merovingian genealogies. Like our BBC researcher, M. Paoli also
contacted
Grande Loge Alpine and met with the Loge's Chancellor, and each received an
ambiguous reply. According to M. Paoli, the Chancellor denied all knowledge of anyone
named "Lobineau' or "Schidlof. As for the various works bearing the Alpina imprint, the
Chancellor asserted quite categorically that they did not exist. And yet a personal friend of
M. Paoli's who was also a member of Alpina, claimed to have seen the works in the
Loge's library. M. Paoli's conclusion is as follows:
There is one of two possibilities. Given the specific character of the
works of Henri Lobineau, Grande Loge Alpine which forbids all political
activity both within Switzerland and without does not want known its
involvement in the affair. Or another movement has availed itself of
the name of the
Grande Loge in order to camouflage its own activities. 3
In the Versailles Annexe of the Bibliotheque Nationale, M. Paoli
231
discovered four issues of Circuit,3' the magazine Fig. 2 The Cover
Design of the Novel, Circuit
~ 1 / r,1 Mi-."
/
ci 11 %VjVn — " /I/ i I .n 11 /l\
i ~y%1\\
,rh 1/r/
232
r ~ ; 1 / 239 mentioned in the Prieure de Sion's
statutes. The first one was dated July 1st, 1959, and its director was
listed as Pierre Plantard. But the magazine itself did not purport to
be connected with, the Prieure de Sion. On the contrary it declared
itself the official organ of something called the
Federation of French Forces. There was even a seal, which M. Paoli reproduces in his
book, and the following data:
Publication periodique culturelle de la Federation des Forces Franpaises 116 Rue Pierre
Jouhet, 116 Aulnay-sous-Bois (Seine-et-Oise)
Tel: 929-72-49
M. Paoli checked the above address. No magazine had ever been
published there. The telephone number, too, proved to be false. And
all M. Paoli's attempts to track the Federation of French Forces proved
futile. To this day no information on any such organisation has been
forthcoming. But it would hardly seem coincidental that the French
headquarters of the
Committees of Public Safety were also Aulnay-sous-Bois. 3z The
Federation of
French Forces would thus appear to have been in some way connected with the
committees. There would seem to be considerable basis for this assumption.
M. Paoli reports that Volume 2 of Circuit alludes to a letter from de
Gaulle to Pierre Plantard, thanking the latter for his service. The
service in question would seem to have been the work of the Committees
of Public
Safety.
According to M. Paoli, most of the articles in Circuit dealt with esoteric matters. They were
signed by Pierre Plantard under both his own name and the pseudonym "Chyren' Anne
Lea Hisler and others with whom we were already familiar. At the same time, however,
there were other articles of a very different kind. Some of them, for example, spoke of a
secret science of vines and viticulture the grafting of vines which, apparently, had some
crucial bearing on politics. This seemed to make no sense unless we assumed that vines
and viticulture were to be understood allegorically a metaphor perhaps for genealogies, for
family trees and dynastic alliances.
When the articles in Circuit were not arcane or obscure, they were,
233
according to M. Paoli, fervently nationalistic. In one of them, for
instance, signed Adrian Sevrette, the author asserts that no solution
for existing problems will be forthcoming except through new methods
and new men, for politics are dead. The curious fact remains that men
do not wish to recognise this. There exists only one question:
economic organisation. But do there still exist men who are capable of
thinking France, as during the Occupation, when patriots and resistance
fighters did not bother themselves about the political tendencies of
their comrades in the fight ?33
And from Volume 4 of Circuit, M. Paoli quotes the following passage:
We desire that the 1 500 copies of Circuit be a contact which kindles a
light, we desire that the voice of patriots be able to transcend
obstacles as in 1940, when they left invaded France to come and knock
on the office door of the leader of Free France. Today, it is the
same, before all we are
French, we are that force which fights in one way or another to
construct a France cleansed and new. This must be done in the same
patriotic spirit, with the same will and solidarity of action. Thus we
cite here what we declare to be an old philosophy .34
There then follows a detailed plan of government to restore to France a lost lustre. It
insists, for example, on the dismantling of departments and the restoration of provinces:
The department is but an arbitrary system, created at the time of the
Revolution, dictated and determined by the era in accordance with the demands of
locomotion (the horse). Today, it no longer represents anything.
In contrast, the province is a living portion of France; it is a whole
vestige of our past, the same basis as that which formed the existence
of our nation; it has its own folklore, its customs, its monuments,
often its local dialects, which we wish to reclaim and promulgate. The
province must have its own specific apparatus for defence and
administration, adapted to its specific needs, with the national unit
234
.35 M. Paoli then quotes eight pages that follow. The material they
contain is organised under the following subheadings:
Council of the Provinces Council of State Parliamentary Council Taxes
Work and Production Medical National Education Age of Majority Housing
and Schools
The plan of government proposed under these subheadings is not inordinately
controversial, and could probably be instituted with a minimum of upheaval.
Nor can the plan be labelled politically. It cannot be called
'left-wing' or 'right-wing', liberal or conservative, radical or
reactionary. On the whole, it seems fairly innocuous; and one is at a
loss to see how it would necessarily restore any particular lost lustre
to France. As M. Paoli says, "The propositions .. . are not
revolutionary. However, they rest on a realistic analysis of the
actual structures of the French state, and are impregnated with a solid
good sense. '36 But then the plan of government outlined in Circuit
makes no explicit mention of the real basis on which, if implemented,
it would presumably ultimately rest the restoration of a popular
monarchy ruled by the Merovingian bloodline. In Circuit there would be
no need to state this, for it would constitute an underlying 'given', a
premise on which everything published in the magazine pivoted. For the
magazine's intended readers the restoration of the Merovingian
bloodline was clearly too obvious and accepted an objective to need be
labouring
At this point irt his book M. Paoli poses a crucial question a question that had haunted us
as well:
We have, on the one hand, a concealed descent from the Merovingians
and, on the other, a secret movement, the Prieure de Sion, whose goal
is to facilitate the restoration of a popular monarchy of the
Merovingian line . But it is necessary to know if this movement
contents itself with esoterico-political speculations (whose unavowed
235
end is to make much money by exploiting the world's gullibility and
naivete) or whether this movement is genuinely active. 3'
M. Paoli then considers this question, reviewing the evidence at his disposal. His
conclusion is as follows:
Unquestionably, the Prieure de Sion seems to possess powerful connections.
In actuality, any creation of an association is submitted to a
preliminary inquiry by the Minister of the Interior. This obtains as
well for a magazine, a publishing house. And yet these people are able
to publish, under pseudonyms, at false addresses, through non-existent
publishing houses, works which cannot be found in circulation either in
Switzerland or in France. There are two possibilities. Either
government authorities are not doing their jobs. Or else .. .3e
M. Paoli does not spell out the alternative. At the same time it is apparent that he
personally regards the unstated alternative as the more probable of the two. M. Paoli's
conclusion, in short, is that government officials, and a great many other powerful people
as well are either members of Sion or obedient to it. If this is so, Sion must be a very
influential organisation indeed.
Having conducted extensive research of his own, M. Paoli is satisfied with the
Merovingian claim to legitimacy. To that extent, he admits, he can make sense of Sion's
objectives. Beyond this point, however, he confesses himself to be profoundly puzzled.
What is the point, he wonders, of restoring the Merovingian bloodline today, 1300 years
after it was deposed? Would a modern-day Merovingian regime be different from any
other modern day regime?
If so, how and why? What is so special about the Merovingians? Even if their claim is
legitimate, it would seem to be irrelevant. Why should so many powerful and intelligent
people, both today and in the past, accord it not only their attention, but their allegiance as
well?
We, of course, were posing precisely the same questions. Like M.
Paoli, we were prepared to acknowledge the Merovingian claim to
legitimacy. But what possible significance could such a claim enjoy
today? Could the technical legitimacy of a monarchy really be so
persuasive and convincing an argument? Why, in the late twentieth
236
century, should any monarchy, legitimate or not, command the kind of
allegiance the
Merovingians seemed to command?
If we were dealing only with a group of idiosyncratic cranks, we could dismiss the matter
out of hand. But we were not. On the contrary, we seemed to be dealing with an
extremely influential organisation which included in its ranks some of the most important,
most distinguished, most acclaimed and most responsible men of our age. And these
men, in many cases, seemed to regard the restoration of the Merovingian dynasty as a
sufficiently valid goal to transcend their personal political, social and religious differences.
It seemed to make no sense that the restoration of a 1300-year-old bloodline should
constitute so vital a cause celebre for so many public and highly esteemed people.
Unless, of course, we were overlooking something.
Unless legitimacy was not the only Merovingian claim. Unless there was
something else of immense consequence that differentiated the
Merovingians from other dynasties. Unless, in short, there was
237
something very special indeed about the Merovingian blood royal. 9
The Long-haired Monarchs
By this time, of course, we had already researched the Merovingian dynasty.
As far as we could we had groped our way through a mist of fantasy and
obscurity even more opaque than that surrounding the Cathars and the
Knights
Templar. We had spent some months endeavouring to disentangle complex
strands of intertwined history and fable. Despite our efforts,
however, the
Merovingians remained for the most part shrouded in mystery.
The Merovingian dynasty issued from the Sicambrians, a tribe of the
Germanic people collectively known as the Franks. Between the fifth
and seventh centuries the Merovingians ruled large parts of what are
now France and Germany. The period of their ascendancy coincides with
the period of
King Arthur a period which constitutes the setting for the romances of the Holy Grail. It is
probably the most impenetrable period of what are now called the Dark Ages. But the
Dark Ages, we discovered, had not been truly dark. On the contrary it quickly became
apparent to us that someone had deliberately obscured them. To the extent that the
Roman Church exercised a veritable monopoly on learning, and especially on writing, the
records that survived represent certain vested interests. Almost everything else has been
lost or censored. But here and there something from time to time slipped through the
curtain drawn across the past, seeped out to us despite the official silence. From these
shadowy vestiges, a reality could be reconstructed a reality of a most interesting kind, and
one very discordant with the tenets of orthodoxy.
Legend and the Merovingians
238
We encountered a number of enigmas surrounding the origins of the
Merovingian dynasty. One usually thinks of a dynasty, for example, as
a ruling family or house which not merely succeeds another ruling
family or house, but does so, by virtue of having displaced, deposed or
supplanted its predecessors. In other words one thinks of dynasties as
commencing with a coup d'etat of one sort or another, often entailing
the extinction of the previous ruling line. The Wars of the Roses in
England, for instance, marked the change of a dynasty. A century or so
later the
Stuarts mounted the English throne only when the Tudors were extinct.
And the Stuarts themselves were deposed forcibly by the houses of
Orange and
Hanover.
In the case of the Merovingians, however, there was no such violent or
abrupt transition, no usurpation, no displacement, no extinction of an
earlier regime. On the contrary the house that came to be called
Merovingian seems already to have ruled over the Franks. The Merovingians were
already rightful and duly acknowledged kings. But there appears to have been something
special about one of them so much so that he conferred his name on the entire dynasty.
The ruler from whom the Merovingians derived their name is most elusive, his historical
reality eclipsed by legend. Merovee (Merovech or Meroveus) was a semi supernatural
figure worthy of classical myth. Even his name bears witness to his miraculous origin and
character. It echoes the French word for 'mother', as well as both the French and Latin
words for 'sea'.
According to both the leading Frankish chronicler and to subsequent
tradition, Merovee was born of two fathers. When already pregnant by
her husband, King Clodio, Merovee's mother supposedly went swimming in
the ocean. In the water she is said to have been seduced and/or raped
by an unidentified marine creature from beyond the sea bes tea
Neptuni
Quinotauri similis', a "beast of Neptune similar to a Quinotaur', whatever a Quinotaur may
have been. This creature apparently impregnated the lady a second time. And when
Merovee was born, there allegedly flowed in his veins a commingling of two different
bloods the blood of a Frankish ruler and of a mysterious aquatic creature.
Such fantastic legends are quite common, of course, not only in the
239
ancient world, but in later European tradition as well. Usually they
are not entirely imaginary, but symbolic or allegorical, masking some concrete historical
fact behind their fabulous facade. In the case of Merovee the fabulous facade might well
indicate an intermarriage of some sort a pedigree transmitted through the mother, as in
Judaism, for instance, or a mingling of dynastic lines whereby the Franks became allied by
blood with someone else; quite possibly with a source from 'beyond the sea' - a source
which, for one or another reason, was transformed by subsequent fable into a sea-
creature.
In any case by virtue of his dual blood Merovee was said to have been
endowed with an impressive array of superhuman powers. And whatever
the historical actuality behind the legend, the Merovingian dynasty
continued to be mantled in an aura of magic, sorcery and the
supernatural. According to tradition, Merovingian monarchs were occult
adepts, initiates in arcane sciences, practitioners of esoteric arts
worthy rivals of Merlin their fabulous near-contemporary. They were
often called 'the sorcerer kings' or 'thaumaturge kings'. By virtue of
some miraculous property in their blood they could allegedly heal by
laying on of hands; and according to one account the tassels at the
fringes of their robes were deemed to possess miraculous curative
powers. They were said to be capable of clairvoyant or telepathic
communication with beasts and with the natural world around them, and
to wear a powerful magical necklace. They were said to possess an
arcane spell which protected them and granted them phenomenal longevity
which history, incidentally, does not seem to confirm. And they all
supposedly bore a distinctive birthmark, which distinguished them from
all other men, which rendered them immediately identifiable and which
attested to their semidivine or sacred blood. This birthmark reputedly
took the form of a red cross, either over the heart a curious
anticipation of the
Templar blazon or between the shoulder blades.
The Merovingians were also frequently called 'the longhaired kings'.
Like
Samson in the Old Testament, they were loath to cut their hair. Like
Samson's, their hair supposedly contained their vertu the essence and
secret of their power. Whatever the basis for this belief in the power
240
of the Merovingians' hair, it seems to have been taken quite
seriously, and as late as A.D. 754. When Childeric III was deposed in that year and
imprisoned, his hair was ritually shorn at the pope's express command.
However extravagant the legends surrounding the Merovingians, they
would seem to rest on some concrete basis, some status enjoyed by the
Merovingian monarchs during their own lifetime. In fact the
Merovingians were not regarded as kings in the modern sense of that
word. They were regarded as priest-kings embodiments of the divine, in
other words, not unlike, say, the ancient Egyptian pharaohs. They did
not rule simply by God's grace. On the contrary they were apparently
deemed the living embodiment and incarnation of God's grace a status
usually reserved exclusively for
Jesus. And they seem to have engaged in ritual practices which partook, if anything,
more of priesthood than of kingship. Skulls found of Merovingian monarchs, for example,
bear what appears to be a ritual incision or hole in the crown. Similar incisions can be
found in the skulls of high priests of early Tibetan Buddhism to allow the soul to escape on
death, and to open direct contact with the divine. There is reason to suppose that the
clerical tonsure is a residue of the Merovingian practice.
In 1653 an important Merovingian tomb was found in the Ardennes the tomb of King
Childeric I, son of Merovee and father of Clovis, most famous and influential of all
Merovingian rulers. The tomb contained arms, treasure and regalia, such as one would
expect to find in a royal tomb. It also contained items less characteristic of kingship than
of magic, sorcery and divination a severed horse's head, for instance, a bull's head made
of gold and a crystal ball."
One of the most sacred of Merovingian symbols was the bee; and King
Childeric's tomb contained no less than three hundred miniature bees
made of solid gold. Along with the tomb's other contents, these bees
were entrusted to Leopold Wilhelm von Habsburg, military governor of
the
Austrian Netherlands at the time and brother of the Emperor Ferdinand
111.2
Eventually most of Childeric's treasure was returned to France. And when he was
crowned emperor in 1804 Napoleon made a special point of having the golden bees
affixed to his coronation robes.
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This incident was not the only manifestation of Napoleon's interest in
the Merovingians. He commissioned a compilation of genealogies by one
Abbe Pichon, to determine whether or not the Merovingian bloodline had
survived the fall of the dynasty. It was on these genealogies,
commissioned by Napoleon, that the genealogies in the "Prieure
documents' were in large part based .3
The Bear from Arcadia
The legends surrounding the Merovingians proved worthy of the age of Arthur and the
Grail romances. At the same time they constituted a daunting rampart between us and
the historical reality we wanted to explore. When we at last gained access to it or what
little of it survived this historical reality was somewhat different from the legends. But it
was not any the less mysterious, extraordinary or evocative.
We could find little verifiable information about the true origins of
the
Merovingians. They themselves claimed descent from Noah, whom they
regarded, even more than Moses, as the source of all Biblical wisdom an
interesting position, which surfaced again a thousand years later in
European Freemasonry. The Merovingians also claimed direct descent from ancient Troy
which, whether true or not, would serve to explain the occurrence in France of Trojan
names like Troyes and Paris. More contemporary writers including the authors of the
"Prieure documents' have endeavoured to trace the Merovingians to ancient Greece, and
specifically to the region known as Arcadia. According to these documents, the ancestors
of the Merovingians were connected with Arcadia's royal house. At some unspecified
date towards the advent of the Christian era they supposedly migrated up the Danube,
then up the Rhine, and established themselves in what is now western Germany.
Whether the Merovingians derived ultimately from Troy or from Arcadia
would now seem to be academic, and there is not necessarily a conflict
between the two claims. According to Homer a substantial contingent of
242
Arcadians was present at the siege of Troy. According to early Greek
histories, Troy was in fact founded by settlers from Arcadia. It is
also worth noting in passing that the bear, in ancient Arcadia, was a
sacred animal a totem on which mystery cults were based and to which
ritual sacrifice was made." Indeed, the very name "Arcadia' derives
from
"Arkades', which means "People of the Bear'. The ancient Arcadians claimed descent
from Arkas, the patron deity of the land, whose name also means 'bear'. According to
Greek myth, Arkas was the son of Kallisto, a nymph connected with Artemis, the
Huntress. To the modern mind Kallisto is most familiar as the constellation Ursa Major the
Great Bear.
For the Sicambrian Franks, from whom the Merovingians issued, the bear enjoyed a
similar exalted status. Like the ancient Arcadians they worshipped the bear in the form of
Artemis or, more specifically, the form of her Gallic equivalent, Arduina, patron goddess of
the Ardennes. The mystery cult of Arduina persisted well into the Middle Ages, one centre
of it being the town of Luneville, not far from two other sites recurring repeatedly in our
investigation Stenay and Orval. As late as 1304 statutes were still being promulgated by
the Church forbidding worship of the heathen goddess."
Given the magical, mythic and totemic status of the bear in the
Merovingian heartland of the Ardennes, it is not surprising that the
name "Ursus' Latin for "bear' should be associated in the "Prieure
documents' with the
Merovingian royal line. Rather more surprising is the fact that the Welsh word for bear is
"arth' from whence the name "Arthur' derives. Although we did not pursue the matter at
this point, the coincidence intrigued us that Arthur should not only be contemporary with
the Merovingians, but also, like them, associated with the bear.
The Sicambrians Enter Gaul
In the early fifth century the invasion of the Huns provoked
large-scale migrations of almost all European tribes. It was at this
time that the Merovingians or, more accurately, the Sicambrian
ancestors of the Merovingians crossed the Rhine and moved en masse into
243
Gaul, establishing themselves in what is now Belgium and northern
France, in the vicinity of the Ardennes. A century later this region came to be called the
kingdom of Austrasie. And the core of the kingdom of Austrasie was what is now known
as Lorraine.
The Sicambrian influx into Gaul did not consist of a horde of wild unkempt barbarians
tumultuously overrunning the land. On the contrary it was a placid and civilised affair. For
centuries the Sicambrians had maintained close contact with the Romans; and though
they were pagans, they were riot savages. Indeed they were well versed in Roman
customs and administration, and followed Roman fashions. Some Sicambrians had
become high-ranking officers in the imperial army. Some had even become Roman
consuls. Thus, the Sicambrian influx was less an onslaught or an invasion than a kind of
peaceful absorption.
And when, towards the end of the fifth century, the
Roman empire collapsed, the Sicambrians filled the vacuum. They did
not do so violently or by force. They retained the old customs and
altered very little. With no upheaval whatever; they assumed control
of the already existing but vacant administrative apparatus. The
regime of the early
Merovingians thus conformed fairly closely to the model of the old Roman empire.
Merovee and His Descendants
Our research exhumed mention of at least two historical figures named
Merovee, and it is not altogether clear which of them legend credits with descent from a
sea creature One Merovee was a Sicambrian chieftain, alive in 417, who fought under the
Romans and died in 438.
It has been suggested by at least one modern expert on the period that
this Merovee actually visited
Rome and caused something of a sensation. There is certainly a record of a visit by an
imposing Frankish leader, conspicuous for his flowing yellow hair.
In 448 the son of this first Merovee, bearing the same name as his
father, was proclaimed king of the Franks at Tournai and reigned until
his death ten years later. He may have been the first official king of
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the Franks as united people. By virtue of this perhaps, or of
whatever was symbolised by his fabulous dual birth, the dynasty which succeeded him
has since been called Merovingian.
Under Merovee's successors the kingdom of the Franks flourished. It
was not the crude barbaric culture often imagined. On the contrary, it
warrants comparison in many respects with the 'high civilisation' of
Byzantium. Even secular literacy was encouraged. Under the
Merovingians secular literacy was more widespread than it would be two
dynasties and five hundred years later. This literacy extended up to
the rulers themselves a most surprising fact, given the rude, untutored
and unlettered character of later medieval monarchs. King Chilperic,
for example, who reigned during the sixth century, not only built
lavish Roman-style amphitheatres at Paris and Soissons, but was also a
dedicated and accomplished poet, who took considerable pride in his
craft. And there are verbatim accounts of his discussions with
ecclesiastical authorities which reflect an extraordinary subtlety,
sophistication and learning hardly qualities one would associate with a
king of the time. In many of these discussions Chilperic proves
himself more than equal to his clerical interlocutors. s
Under Merovingian rule the Franks were often brutal, but they were not
really a warlike people by nature or disposition. They were not like
the
Vikings, for instance, or the Vandals, Visigoths or Huns. Their main
activities were farming and commerce. Much attention was devoted to
maritime trade, especially in the Mediterranean. And the artefacts of
the
Merovingian epoch reflect a quality of workmanship which is truly amazing as the Sutton
Hoo treasure ship attests.
The wealth accumulated by the Merovingian kings was enormous, even by
later standards. Much of this wealth was in gold coins of superb
quality, produced by royal mints at certain important sites including
what is now
Sion in Switzerland. Specimens of such coins were found in the Sutton
Hoo treasure ship, and can now be seen in the British Museum. Many of
the coins bear a distinctive equal-armed cross, identical to the one
subsequently adopted during the Crusades for the Frankish kingdom of
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Jerusalem. Blood Royal
Although Merovingian culture was both temperate and surprisingly modern, the monarchs
who presided over it were another matter. They were not typical even of rulers of their
own age, for the atmosphere of mystery and legend, magic and the supernatural,
surrounded them even during their lifetimes. If the customs and economy of the
246
Merovingian world did not differ markedly from others of the period, the aura about the
247
248
Sons of the Merovingian blood were not "created' kings. On the contrary they "mere
automatically regarded as such on the advent of their twelfth birthday. There was no
public ceremony of anointment, no coronation of any sort. Power was simply assumed, as
by sacred right. But while the king was supreme authority in the realm, he was never
obliged or even expected to sully his hands with the mundane business of governing- He
was essentially a ritualised figure, a priest-king, and his role was not necessarily to do
anything, simply to be. The king ruled, in short, but did not govern. In this respect, his
status was somewhat similar to that of the present British royal family.
Government and administration were left to a non-royal official, the
equivalent of a chancellor, who held the title
"Mayor of the Palace'. On the whole the structure of the Merovingian regime had many
things in common with modern constitutional monarchies.
Even after their conversion to Christianity the Merovingian rulers, like the Patriarchs of the
Old Testament, were polygamous. On occasion they enjoyed harems of oriental
proportions. Even when the aristocracy, under pressure from the Church, became
rigorously monogamous, the monarchy remained exempt. And the Church, curiously
enough, seems to have accepted this prerogative without any inordinate protest.
According to one modern commentator:
Why was it [polygamy] tacitly approved by the Franks themselves? We
may here be in the presence of ancient usage of polygamy in a royal
family a family of such rank that its blood could not be ennobled by
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any match, however advantageous, nor degraded by the blood of slaves
... It was a matter of indifference whether a queen were taken from a royal dynasty or
from among courtesans .. . The fortune of the dynasty rested in its blood and was shared
by all who were of that blood."
And again, "It is just possible that, in the Merovingians, we may have a dynasty of
Germanic Heerkonige derived from an ancient kingly family of the migration period."
But how many families can there possibly have been in the whole of
world history which enjoyed such extraordinary and exalted status? Why
should the
Merovingians do so? Why should their blood come to be invested with such immense
power? These questions continued to perplex us.
Clovis and His Pact with the Church
The most famous of all Merovingian rulers was Merovee's grandson,
Clovis I, who reigned between 481 and 51 1 . Clovis's name is familiar
to any French schoolchild, for it was under Clovis that the Franks were
converted to Roman
Christianity. And it was through Clovis that Rome began to establish her undisputed
supremacy in Western Europe a supremacy that would remain unchallenged for a
thousand years.
By 496 the Roman Church was in a precarious situation. During the
course of the fifth century, its very existence had been severely
threatened. Between 384 and 399 the bishop of Rome had already begun
to call himself the pope, but his official status was no greater than
that of any other bishop, and quite different from that of the pope
today. He was not, in any sense, the spiritual leader or supreme head
of Christendom. He merely represented a single body of vested
interests, one of many divergent forms of
Christianity and one which was desperately fighting for survival against a multitude of
conflicting schisms and theological points of view.
Officially the Roman Church had no greater authority than, say, the
Celtic church -with which it was constantly at odds. It had no greater
authority than heresies such as Arianism, which denied Jesus's divinity
and insisted on his humanity. Indeed during much of the fifth century
250
every bishopric in Western Europe was either Arian or vacant.
If the Roman Church was to survive, still more assert its authority, it
would need the support of a champion a powerful secular figure who
might represent it. If Christianity was to evolve in accordance with
Roman doctrine, that doctrine would have to be disseminated,
implemented and imposed by secular force a force sufficiently powerful
to withstand and eventually extirpate the challenge of rival Christian
creeds. Not surprisingly the Roman Church, in its most acute moment of
need, turned to
Clovis.
By 486 Clovis had significantly increased the extent of Merovingian
domains, striking out from the Ardennes to annex a number of adjacent
kingdoms and principalities, vanquishing a number of rival tribes. As
a result, many important cities Troyes, for instance, Rheims and Amiens
were incorporated into his realm. Within a decade it was apparent
that
Clovis was well on his way to becoming the most powerful potentate in
Western Europe.
The conversion and baptism of Clovis proved to be of crucial importance to our
investigation. An account of it was compiled, in all its particulars and details, around the
time it happened. Two and a half centuries later this account, called The Life of Saint
Remy, was destroyed, except for a few scattered manuscript pages. And the evidence
suggests that it was destroyed deliberately. Nevertheless the fragments that survive bear
witness to the importance of what was involved.
According to tradition, Clovis's conversion was a sudden and unexpected
affair, effected by the king's wife, Clothilde - a fervent devotee of
Rome, who seems to have badgered her husband until he accepted her
faith and who was subsequently canonised for her efforts. In these
efforts she was said to have been guided and assisted by her confessor,
Saint Remy. But behind these traditions, there lies a very practical
and mundane historical reality. When Clovis was converted to Roman
Christianity and became first
Catholic king of the Franks, he had more to gain than his wife's
approbation, and a kingdom more tangibly substantial than the kingdom
of
Heaven.
It is known that in 496 a number of secret meetings occurred between
Clovis and Saint R6my. Immediately thereafter an accord was ratified
between
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Clovis and the Roman Church. For Rome this accord constituted a major
political triumph. It would ensure the Church's survival, and establish that Church as
supreme spiritual authority in the West. It would consolidate Rome's status as an equal to
the Greek Orthodox faith based in Constantinople. It would offer a prospect of Roman
hegemony and an effective means of eradicating the hydra heads of heresy. And Clovis
would be the means of implementing these things the sword of the Church of Rome, the
instrument whereby Rome imposed her spiritual dominion, the secular arm and palpable
manifestation of Roman power.
In return Clovis was granted the title of "Novus Constantinus' - "New
Constantine'. In other words, he was to preside over a unified empire
a "Holy Roman Empire' intended to succeed the one supposedly created
under
Constantine and destroyed by the Visigoths and Vandals not long before.
According to one modern expert of the period, Clovis, prior to his
baptism, was 'fortified .. . with visions of an empire in succession to
that of
Rome, which should be the inheritance of the Merovingian race. "9
According to another modern writer, "Clovis must now become a kind of western emperor,
a patriarch to the western Germans, reigning over, though not governing, all peoples and
kings. "
The pact between Clovis and the Roman Church, in short, was one of
momentous consequence to Christendom not only the Christendom of the
time, but also the Christendom of the next millennium. Clovis's
baptism was deemed to mark the birth of a new Roman empire a Christian
empire, based on the Roman Church and administered, on the secular
level, by the
Merovingian bloodline. In other words, an indissoluble bond was
established between church and state, each pledging allegiance to the
other, each binding itself to the other in perpetuity. In ratification
of this bond, in 496, Clovis allowed himself to be formally baptised by
Saint Remy at
Rheims. At the climax of the ceremony, Saint Remy pronounced his famous words:
Mitis depone colla, Sicamber, adora quod incendisti, incendi quod adorasti.
(Bow thy head humbly, Sicambrian, revere what thou hast burned and what
252
thou hast revered.) It is important to note that Clovis's baptism was
not a coronation as historians sometimes suggest. The Church did not
make Clovis a king. He was already that, and all the Church could do
was recognise him as such. By virtue of so doing, the Church
officially bound itself not to Clovis alone, but to his successors as
well not to a single individual, but to a bloodline. In this respect
the pact resembled the covenant which God, in the Old Testament, makes
with King David a pact which can be modified, as in Solomon's case, but
not revoked, broken or betrayed. And the
Merovingians did not lose sight of the parallel.
During the remaining years of his life Clovis fully realised Rome's
ambitious expectations of him. With irresistible efficiency, faith was
imposed by the sword; and with the sanction and spiritual mandate of
the
Church, the Frankish kingdom expanded to both east and south,
encompassing most of modern France and much of modern Germany. Among
Clovis's numerous adversaries the most important were the Visigoths,
who adhered to Arian
Christianity. It was against the empire of the Visigoths which
straddled the Pyrenees and extended as far north as Toulouse that
Clovis directed his most assiduous and concerted campaigns. In 507 he
decisively defeated the Visigoths at the Battle of Vouille. Shortly
thereafter Aquitaine and
Toulouse fell into Frankish hands. The Visigoth empire north of the
Pyrenees effectively collapsed before the Frankish ohslaught. From
Toulouse, the Visigoths fell back to Carcassonne. Driven from Carcassonne, they
established their capital, and last remaining bastion, in the Razes, at Rhedae now the
village of Rennes-leChateau.
Dagobert II
In 51 1 Clovis died, and the empire he had created was divided,
according to Merovingian custom, between his four sons. For more than
a century thereafter the Merovingian dynasty presided over a number of
disparate and often warring kingdoms, while lines of succession became
increasingly tangled and claims to thrones increasingly confused. The
authority once centralised in Clovis became progressively more diffuse,
253
progressively Map 7 The Merovingian Kingdoms
NeusTRIA_
AUSTRASIA
BURGUNDY
wColognc" — A.,
- . Ruucn - - ~ _ ~MeezTr-j
Pans ._
BRITTANY ;
(ARMORICA)
Pouicn
- AQUITAINE
_"N;A
Touloum ='~PMaruJlcz~
Narhmnc
254
more inchoate, and secular order deteriorated. Intrigues,
machinations, kidnappings and political assassination became ever more commonplace.
And the court chancellors, or "Mayors of the Palace', accumulated more and more power
a factor which would eventually contribute to the fall of the dynasty.
Bereft increasingly of authority the later Merovingian rulers have often been called "les rois
faineant' - "the enfeebled kings'. Posterity has contemptuously stigmatised them as weak,
ineffectual monarchs, effeminate and pliably helpless in the hands of cunning and wily
counsellors. Our research revealed that this stereotype was not strictly accurate. It is true
that the constant wars, vendettas and internecine strife thrust a number of Merovingian
princes on to the throne at an extremely youthful age and they were thus easily
manipulated by their advisers. But those who did attain manhood proved as strong and
decisive as any of their predecessors. This certainly seems to have been the case with
Dagobert II.
Dagobert II was born in 653, heir to the kingdom of Austrasie. On his father's death in 656
extravagant attempts were made to preclude his inheritance of the throne. Indeed
Dagobert's early life reads like a medieval legend, or a fairy tale. But it is well
documented history."
On his father's death Dagobert was kidnapped by the presiding Mayor of
the
Palace, an individual named Grimoald. Attempts to find the
five-year-old child proved fruitless, and it was not difficult to
convince the court that he was dead. On this basis Grimoald then
engineered his own son's acquisition of the throne, claiming this had
been the wish of the former monarch, Dagobert's deceased father. The
ruse worked effectively. Even
Dagobert's mother, believing her son dead, deferred to the ambitious Mayor of the Palace.
However, Grimoald had apparently balked at actually murdering the young
prince. In secret Dagobert had been confided to the charge of the
bishop of
Poitiers. The bishop, it seems, was equally reluctant to murder the child.
Dagobert was therefore consigned to permanent exile in Ireland. He
grew into manhood at the Irish monastery of Slane, '2 not far from
Dublin; and here, at the school attached to the monastery, he received
255
an education unobtainable in France at the time. At some point during
this period he is supposed to have attended the court of the High King of Tara.
And he is said to have made the acquaintance of three Northumbrian
princes, also being educated at Slane. In 666, probably still in
Ireland, Dagobert married Mathilde, a Celtic princess. Not long after
he moved from Ireland to
England, establishing residence at York, in the kingdom of Northumbria. Here he formed
a close friendship with Saint Wilfrid, bishop of York, who became his mentor.
During the period in question a schism still existed between the Roman
and
Celtic Churches, with the latter refusing to acknowledge the former's
authority. In the interests of unity Wilfrid was intent on bringing
the
Celtic Church into the Roman fold. This he had already accomplished at the famous
Council of Whitby in 664. But his subsequent friendship and patronage of Dagobert II may
not have been devoid of ulterior motive.
By
Dagobert's time Merovingian allegiance to Rome as dictated by the
Church's pact with Clovis a century and a half before -was somewhat less fervent than it
might have been. As a loyal adherent of Rome, Wilfrid was eager to consolidate Roman
supremacy not only in Britain, but on the continent as well. Were Dagobert to return to
France and reclaim the kingdom of Austrasie, it would have been expedient to ensure his
fealty.
Wilfrid may well have seen the exiled king as a possible future sword-arm of the Church.
In 670 Mathilde, Dagobert's Celtic wife, died giving birth to her third daughter. Wilfrid
hastened to arrange a new match for the recently bereft monarch, and in 671 Dagobert
married for the second time. If his first alliance was of potential dynastic import, his
second was even more so.
Dagobert's new wife was Giselle de Razes, daughter of the count of
Razes and niece of the king of the Visigoths. '3 In other words the
Merovingian bloodline was now allied to the royal bloodline of the
Visigoths. Herein lay the seeds of an embryonic empire which would
have united much of modern
France, extending from the Pyrenees to the Ardennes. Such an empire, moreover, would
have brought the Visigoths still with strong Arian tendencies firmly under Roman control.
256
When Dagobert married Giselle, he had already 2 The Merovingian
Dynasty The Kings
From the work of Henri Lobineau (Henri de Lenoncourt)
Su mbrun ~ ~ Sahan Frank
MERO VEE SIEGSECLODION VI
"a- fish leader King f Cambni m 477 438-48
Followrd the MERO VEE
Pagan h of The Young'
Uuna of the King of Franks of Yswl
At o( the nine 448- 58 fin,"
CHILD ERIC 11 Hogra
King of Franks of Yswl ducowtedwur 458-96 Toamai m 1653
EVOCHILDE CLOVIS 1 1 eapnad by CLOTHILDE
(pagan) 456-51 1 St. Remi(Chnrrun)
King of she Franks24.12.496tit of Icing of Burgundy
THIERRY 1 CLODOMIRCHILDEBERTCLOTHILDECLOTAIRE 1 -6 wives King f
Auurasia King of OrleansKmj of Pansm. AmalncKing of Soisrons 51 1-34
51 1 -2451 1 -.58King of VisiBoths51 1 -58
King of the Frwcs 4 other children
SIGISBERT ICHILPERIC 1 =GALESWINTHE (sixer of Bounehaut) King f
Aussrasia 561-84 561-75 King of SoiswnsFREDEGONDE B.-hut d. of Visigoth
King rtomarciil CLOTn B=Fm 3
SIGONIUS 584-628
of she Francs Prefect of the Gauls DAGO BERT I- 5 wives
V,vgorh 602-38
King f Ausrcasia 622
TULCA SERA lANNEMUNDUSKing of the Fnolcs 630 lu Count of O.aass Bishop
of Lyons 653 King g of Visigoth, d. 642 IMMACHILDE -SIGISBERT BIBATILDE
f= CLOVIS If
King of Aussrasia 632 1633-56
GISLICA-BERA11 629-56
r of Wamba, Count of Rash Kmg of Vistgoshs I from 6J I
sours
Inch I 666DAGO BERT BBLICHILDE CHIMERIC 1 1
MATHILDE651-79T651-74
671 King of Austrasia 674I ("ISELLE DE RAZESAAs."by unde rl 653-76 f
Pew,rlie Fin'l
CHILD ERIC m Depored 751 Peps the Shon',
SIGI$BERT Iv ho uwrped htmse wnh the 676-758 P~ Count of RAZ2a (FaA~A of Ch' of th,
Idmr 11)
Hast known Merovingaai
257
Lt. continua ire turned to the continent. According to existing
documentation, the marriage was celebrated at Giselle's official
residence of Rhedae, or
Rennes-leChateau. Indeed, the marriage was reputedly celebrated in the
church of Saint Madeleine the structure on the site of which Berenger
Sauniere's church was subsequently erected.
Dagobert's first marriage had produced three daughters but no male
heir. By
Giselle, Dagobert had two more daughters and at last, in 676, one son the infant Sigisbert
IV. And by the time Sigisbert was born, Dagobert was once more a king.
For some three years he seems to have bided his time at
Rennes-leChateau, watching the vicissitudes of his domains to the
north. Finally, in 674, the opportunity had presented itself. With
the support of his mother and her advisers, the long-exiled monarch
announced himself, reclaimed his realm and was officially proclaimed
king of Austrasie. Wilfrid of York was instrumental in his
reinstatement. According to Gerard de Sede, so too was a much more
elusive, much more mysterious figure, about whom there is little
historical information Saint Amatus, bishop of Sion in
Switzerland. '4
Once restored to the throne, Dagobert was no roi faineant. On the
contrary, he proved to be a worthy successor to Clovis. At once he set
about asserting and consolidating his authority, taming the anarchy
that prevailed throughout Austrasie and re-establishing order. He
ruled firmly, breaking the control of various rebellious nobles who had
mobilised sufficient military and economic power to challenge the
throne. And at
Rennes-leChateau he is said to have amassed a substantial treasury. These resources
were to be used to finance the reconquest of Aquitaine,"5 which had seceded from
Merovingian hands some forty years previously and declared itself an independent
principality.
At the same time Dagobert must have been a severe disappointment to
Wilfrid of York. If Wilfrid had expected him to be a sword-arm of the
Church,
Dagobert proved nothing of the sort. On the contrary he seems to have
curbed attempted expansion on the part of the Church within his realm,
and thereby incurred ecclesiastical displeasure. A letter from an
irate
258
Frankish prelate to Wilfrid exists, condemning Dagobert for levying
taxes, for "scorning the churches of God together with their bishops'
."6
Nor was this the only respect in which Dagobert seems to have run foul
of
Rome. By virtue of his marriage to a Visigoth princess he had acquired
considerable territory in what is now the Languedoc. He may also have
acquired something else. The Visigoths were only nominally loyal to
the
Roman Church. In fact their allegiance to Rome was extremely tenuous, and a tendency
towards Arianism still obtained in the royal family. There is evidence to suggest that
Dagobert absorbed something of this tendency.
By 679, after three years on the throne, Dagobert had made a number of
powerful enemies, both secular and ecclesiastic. By curbing their
rebellious autonomy, he had incurred the hostility of certain
vindictive nobles. By thwarting its attempted expansion, he had roused
the antipathy of the Church. By establishing an effective and
centralised regime, he had provoked the envy and alarm of other
Frankish potentates the rulers of adjacent kingdoms. Some of these
rulers had allies and agents within
Dagobert's realm. One such was the king's own Mayor of the Palace, Pepin the Fat. And
Pepin, clandestinely aligning himself with Dagobert's political foes, did not shrink from
either treachery or assassination.
Like most Merovingian rulers, Dagobert had at least two capital cities.
The most important of these was Stenay," on the fringe of the Ardennes.
Near the royal palace at Stenay stretched a heavily wooded expanse,
long deemed sacred, called the Forest of Woevres. It was in this
forest, on December 23rd, 679, that Dagobert is said to have gone
hunting. Given the date, the hunt may well have been a ritual occasion
of some sort. In any case, what followed evokes a multitude of
archetypal echoes, including the murder of
Siegfried in the Nibelungenlied.
Towards midday, succumbing to fatigue, the king lay down to rest beside
a stream, at the foot of a tree. While he slept, one of his servants.
supposedly his godson stole furtively up to him and, acting under
Pepin's orders, pierced him with a lance through the eye. The
murderers then returned to Stenay, intent on exterminating the rest of
259
the family in residence there. How successful they were in this
latter undertaking is not clear. But there is no question that the reign of Dagobert and his
family came to an abrupt and violent end. Nor did the Church waste much time grieving.
On the contrary, it promptly endorsed the actions of the king's assassins. There is even a
letter from a Frankish prelate to Wilfrid of York, which attempts to rationalise and justify
the regicide."
Dagobert's body and posthumous status both underwent a curious number
of vicissitudes. Immediately after his death, he was buried at Stenay,
in the
Royal Chapel of Saint Remy. In 872 nearly two centuries later he was
exhumed and moved to another church. This new church became the Church
of
Saint Dagobert, for in the same year the dead king was canonised not by
the pope (who did not claim this right exclusively until 1 159), but by
a
Metropolitan Conclave. The reason for Dagobert's canonisation remains unclear.
According to one source, it was because his relics were believed to have preserved the
vicinity of Stenay against Viking raids though this explanation begs the question, for it is
not clear why the relics should have possessed such powers in the first place.
Ecclesiastical authorities seem embarrassingly ignorant concerning the matter. They
admit that Dagobert, for some reason, became the object of a fully fledged cult and had
his own feast day December 23rd, the anniversary of his death. "9 But they seem utterly at
a loss as to why he should have been so exalted. It is possible, of course, that the Church
felt guilty about its role in the king's death. Dagobert's canonisation may therefore have
been an attempt to make amends. If so, however, there is no indication of why such a
gesture should have been deemed necessary, nor why it should have had to wait for two
centuries.
Stenay, the Church of Saint Dagobert and perhaps the relics it
contained were all accorded great significance by a number of
illustrious figures in the centuries that followed. In 1069, for
example, the duke of Lorraine -Godfroi de Bouillon's grandfather
accorded special protection to the church and placed it under the
auspices of the near-by Abbey of Gorze. Some years later the church
was appropriated by a local nobleman. In 1093
Godfroi de Bouillon mobilised an army and subjected Stenay to a
260
full-scale siege for the sole purpose, it would appear, of regaining
the church and returning it to the Abbey of Gorze.
During the French Revolution, the church was destroyed and the relics
of
Saint Dagobert, like so many others throughout France, were dispersed.
Today a ritually incised skull said to be Dagobert's is in the custody of a convent at Mons.
All other relics of the king have disappeared.
But in the mid-nineteenth century a most curious document came to
light. It was a poem, a twenty one verse litany, entitled "De sancta
Dagoberto mar tyre prose' implying that Dagobert was martyred to, or
for, something. This poem is believed to date from at least the Middle
Ages, possibly much earlier. Significantly enough, it was found at the
Abbey of Orval.z
The Usurpation by the Carolingians
Strictly speaking Dagobert was not the last ruler of the Merovingian dynasty. In fact
Merovingian monarchs retained at least . nominal status for another three quarters of a
century. But these last Merovingians did warrant the appellation of rois faineants. Many
of them were extremely young. In consequence they were often weak, helpless pawns in
the hands of the Mayors of the Palace, incapable of asserting their authority or of making
decisions of their own. They were really little more than victims; and more than a few
became sacrifices.
Moreover, the later Merovingians were of cadet branches, not scions of the main line
descended from Clovis and Merovee. The main line of Merovingian descent had been
deposed with Dagobert II. To all intents and purposes, therefore, Dagobert's
assassination may be regarded as signalling the end of the Merovingian dynasty. When
Childeric III died in 754, it was a mere formality so far as dynastic power was concerned.
As rulers of the Franks the Merovingian bloodline had been effectively extinct long before.
As power seeped from the hands of the Merovingians, it passed into the
hands of the Mayors of the Palace a process that had already commenced
before Dagobert's reign. It was a Mayor of the Palace. Pepin the Fat,
261
who engineered Dagobert's death. And Pepin the Fat was followed by
his son, the famous Charles Martel.
In the eyes of posterity Charles Martel is one of the most heroic figures in French history.
There is certainly some basis for the acclaim given him.
Under Charles the Moorish invasion of France was checked at the Battle
of
Poitiers in 732; and Charles, by virtue of this victory, was, in some sense, both "defender
of the Faith' and "saviour of Christendom'. What is curious is that Charles Martel, strong
man though he was, never seized the throne -which certainly lay within his grasp. In fact
he seems to have regarded the throne with a certain superstitious awe and, in all
probability, as a specifically Merovingian prerogative. Certainly Charles's successors,
who did seize the throne, went out of their way to establish their legitimacy by marrying
Merovingian princesses.
Charles Martel died in 741 . Ten years later his son, Pepin III, Mayor
of the Palace to King Childeric III, enlisted the support of the Church
in laying formal claim to the throne. "Who should be king?" Pepin's
ambassadors asked the pope. "The man who actually holds power, or he,
Pepin's favour. By apostolic authority he ordered that Pepin be
created king of the Franks a brazen betrayal of the pact ratified with
Clovis two and a half centuries before. Thus endorsed by Rome, Pepin
deposed Childeric
III, confined the king to a monastery and to humiliate him, to deprive him of his "magical
powers' or both had him shorn of his sacred hair.
Four years later Childeric died, and Pepin's claim to the throne was undisputed."
A year before a crucial document had conveniently made its appearance,
which subsequently altered the course of Western history. This
document was called the "Donation of Constantine'. Today there is no
question that it was a forgery, concocted and not very skilfully within
the papal
Chancery. At the time, however, it was deemed genuine, and its influence was enormous.
The "Donation of Constantine' purported to date from Constantine's
alleged conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. According to the
"Donation',
Constantine had officially given to the bishop of Rome his imperial symbols and regalia,
which thus became the Church's property.
262
The "Donation' further alleged that Constantine, for the first time,
had declared the bishop of Rome to be "Vicar of Christ' and offered him the status of
emperor. In his capacity as "Vicar of Christ' the bishop had supposedly returned the
imperial regalia to Constantine, who wore them subsequently with ecclesiastical sanction
and permission more or less in the manner of a loan.
The implications of this document are clear enough. According to the
"Donation of Constantine', the bishop of Rome exercised supreme secular as well as
supreme spiritual authority over Christendom. He was, in effect, a papal emperor, who
could dispose as he wished of the imperial crown, who could delegate his power or any
aspect thereof as he saw fit. In other words he possessed, through Christ, the un
challengeable right to create or depose kings. It is from the "Donation of Constantine' that
the subsequent power of the Vatican in secular affairs ultimately derives.
Claiming authority from the "Donation of Constantine', the Church deployed its influence
on behalf of Pepin III. It devised a ceremony whereby the blood of usurpers, or anyone
else for that matter, could be made sacred.
This ceremony came to be known as coronation and anointment as those terms were
understood during the Middle Ages and on into the Renaissance.
At Pepin's coronation, bishops for the first time were authorised to attend, with rank equal
to that of secular nobles. And the coronation itself no longer entailed the recognition of a
king, or a pact with a king.
It now consisted of nothing less than the creation of a king.
The ritual of anointment was similarly transformed. In the past, when practised at all, it
was a ceremonial accoutrement an act of recognition and ratification. Now, however, it
assumed a new significance. Now it took precedence over blood, and could "magically',
as it were, sanctify blood.
Anointment became something more than a symbolic gesture. It became the literal act
whereby divine grace was conferred upon a ruler. And the pope, by performing this act,
became supreme mediator between God and kings.
Through the ritual of anointment, the Church arrogated to itself the
right to make kings. Blood was now subordinate to oil. And all
263
monarchs were rendered ultimately subordinate, and subservient, to the
pope.
In 754 Pepin III was officially anointed at Ponthion, thus inaugurating
the
Carolingian dynasty. The name derives from Charles Martel, although it is generally
associated with the most famous of Carolingian rulers, Charles the Great, Carolus
Magnus or, as he is best known, Charlemagne.
And in 800
Charlemagne was proclaimed Holy Roman Emperor a title which, by virtue of the pact with
Clovis three centuries before, should have been reserved exclusively for the Merovingian
bloodline. Rome now became the seat of an empire that embraced the whole of Western
Europe, whose rulers ruled only with the sanction of the pope.
In 496 the Church had pledged itself in perpetuity to the Merovingian bloodline. In
sanctioning the assassination of Dagobei't, in devising the ceremonies of coronation and
anointment, in endorsing Pepin's claim to the throne, it had clandestinely betrayed its pact.
In crowning Charlemagne it had made its betrayal not only public, but a fait accompli. In
the words of one modern authority:
We cannot therefore be sure that the anointing with chrism of the
Carolingians was intended to compensate for the loss of magical
properties of the blood symbolised by long hair. If it compensated for
anything, it was probably for loss of faith incurred in breaking an
oath of fidelity in a particularly shocking way.zz
And again, "Rome showed the way by providing in unction a king-making
rite that somehow cleared the consciences of "all the Franks". '23
Not all consciences, however. The usurpers themselves seem to have felt, if not a sense
of guilt, at least an acute need to establish their legitimacy.
To this end Pepin III, immediately before his anointment, had ostentatiously married a
Merovingian princess. And Charlemagne did likewise.
Charlemagne, moreover, seems to have been painfully aware of the
betrayal involved in his coronation. According to contemporary
accounts, the coronation was a carefully stage-managed affair,
engineered by the pope behind the Frankish monarch's back; and
Charlemagne appears to have been both surprised and profoundly
264
embarrassed. A crown of some sort had already been clandestinely
prepared.
Charlemagne had been lured to Rome and there persuaded to attend a
special mass. When he took his place in the church, the pope, without
warning, placed a crown upon his head, while the populace acclaimed him
as "Charles,
Augustus, crowned by God, the great and peace-loving emperor of the Romans'.
In the words of a chronicler writing at the time, Charlemagne "made it
clear that he would not have entered the Cathedral that day at all,
although it was the greatest of all festivals of the Church, if he had
known in advance what the Pope was planning to do. '24
But whatever Charlemagne's responsibility in the affair, the pact
with
Clovis and the Merovingian bloodline had been shamelessly betrayed.
And all our inquiries indicated that this betrayal, even though it
occurred more than 1100 years ago, continued to rankle for the Prieure
de Sion. Mathieu
Paoli, the independent researcher quoted in the preceding chapter, reached a similar
conclusion:
For them [the Prieure de Sion], the only authentic nobility is the
nobility of Visigothic/Merovingian origin. The Carolingians, then all
others, are but usurpers. In effect, they were but functionaries of
the king, charged with administering lands who, after transmitting by
heredity their right to govern these lands, then purely and simply
seized power for themselves. In consecrating Charlemagne in the year
800, the Church perjured itself, for it had concluded, at the baptism
of Clovis, an alliance with the
Merovingians which had made France the eldest daughter of the Church."
The Exclusion of Dagobert II from History
With the murder of Dagobert II in 679 the Merovingian dynasty
effectively ended. With the death of Childeric III in 755 the
Merovingians seemed to vanish from the stage of world history
completely. According to the "Prieure documents', however, the
Merovingian bloodline in fact survived. According to the "Prieure
documents', it was perpetuated to the present day, from the infant
265
Sigisbert IV Dagobert's son by his second wife, Giselle de Razes.There is no question that
Sigisbert existed and that he was Dagobert's heir. According to all sources other than the
"Prieure documents', however, it is unclear what happened to him. Certain chroniclers
have tacitly assumed that he was murdered along with his father and other members of
the royal family. One highly dubious account asserts that he died in a hunting accident a
year or two before his father's death. If that is true Sigisbert must have been a precocious
hunter, for he cannot possibly have been much more than three years old at the time.
There is no record whatever of Sigisbert's death. Nor is there any
record apart from the evidence in the "Prieure documents' of his
survival. The whole issue seems to have been lost in "the mists of
time', and no one seems to have been much concerned about it except, of
course, for the
Prieure de Sion. In any case Sion appeared to be privy to certain information which was
not available elsewhere; or was deemed of too little consequence to warrant much
investigation; or was deliberately suppressed.
It is hardly surprising that no account of Sigisbert's fate has been
filtered down to us. There was no publicly accessible account even
of
Dagobert until the seventeenth century. At some point during the
Middle
Ages a systematic attempt was apparently made to erase Dagobert from
history, to deny that he ever existed. Today Dagobert II can be found
in any encyclopedia. Until 1646, however, there was no acknowledgment
whatever that he had ever lived. zs Any list or genealogy of French
rulers compiled before 1646 simply omits him, jumping (despite the
flagrant inconsistency) from Dagobert I to Dagobert III one of the
last
Merovingian monarchs, who died in 715. And not until 1655 was Dagobert II reinstated in
accepted lists of French kings. Given this process of eradication, we were not unduly
astonished at the dearth of information relating to Sigisbert. And we could not but suspect
that whatever information did exist had been deliberately suppressed.
But why, we wondered, should Dagobert II have been excised from history?
What was being concealed by such an excision? Why should one wish to
deny the very existence of a man? One possibility, of course, is to
negate thereby the existence of his heirs. If Dagobert never lived,
266
Sigisbert cannot have lived either. But why should it have been
important, as late as the seventeenth century, to deny that Sigisbert had ever lived?
Unless he had indeed survived, and his descendants were still regarded as a threat.
It seemed to us that we were clearly dealing with some sort of 'cover-up'.
Quite patently there were vested interests which had something of import to lose if
knowledge of Sigisbert's survival were made public. In the ninth century and perhaps as
late as the Crusades, these interests would seem to have been the Roman Church and
the French royal line. But why should the issue have continued to matter as late as the
age of Louis XIV? It would surely have been an academic point by then, for three French
dynasties had come and gone, while Protestantism had broken Roman hegemony.
Unless there was indeed something very special about the Merovingian blood. Not
'magical properties', but something else -something that retained its explosive potency
even after superstitions about magical blood had fallen by the wayside.
Prince Guillem de Gellone, Comte de Razes
According to the "Prieure documents', Sigisbert IV, on the death of his
father, was rescued by his sister and smuggled southwards to the domain
of his mother the Visigoth princess, Giselle de Razes. He is said to
have arrived in the Languedoc in 681 and, at some point shortly
thereafter, to have adopted or inherited his uncle's titles, duke of
Razes and count of
Rhedae. He is also said to have adopted the surname, or nickname, of "Plant-Ard'
(subsequently Plantard) from the appellation 'rejeton ardent' 'ardently flowering shoot' of
the Merovingian vine. Under this name, and under the titles acquired from his uncle, he is
said to have perpetuated his lineage. And by 886 one branch of that lineage is said to
have culminated in a certain Bernard Plantavelu apparently derived from Plant-and or
Plantard whose son became the first duke of Aquitaine.
As far as we could ascertain, no independent historian either confirmed
267
or disputed these assertions. The whole matter was simply ignored. But the circumstantial
evidence argued persuasively that Sigisbert did indeed survive to perpetuate his lineage.
The assiduous eradication of Dagobert from history lends credence to
this conclusion. By denying his existence, any line of descent from
him would have been invalidated. This constitutes a motive for an
otherwise inexplicable action. Among the other fragments of evidence
is a charter, dated 718, which pertains to the foundation of a
monastery a few miles from Rennes-leChateau by "Sigebert, Comte de
Rhedae and his wife,
Magdala'.z' Apart from this charter nothing is heard of the Rhedae or Razes titles for
another century. When one of them reappears, however, it does so in an extremely
interesting context.
By 742 there was an independent and fully autonomous state in the south
of
France a princedom according to some accounts, a fully fledged kingdom according to
others. Documentation is sketchy and history is vague about it most historians, in fact, are
unaware of its existence but there is no question of its reality. It was officially recognised
by Charlemagne and his successors, and by the caliph of Baghdad and the Islamic world.
It was grudgingly recognised by the Church, some of whose lands it confiscated.
And it survived until the late ninth century.
Sometime between 759 and 768 the ruler of this state -which included
the
Razes and Rennes-leChateau was officially pronounced a king. Despite
Rome's disapprobation, he was recognised as such by the Carolingians, to whom he
pledged himself as vassal. In existing accounts he figures most frequently under the
name of Theodoric, or Thierry. And most modern scholars regard him as being of
Merovingian descent .z8 There is no definitive evidence from where such descent might
have derived. It might well have derived from Sigisbert. In any case, there is no question
that by 790 Theodoric's son, Guillem de Gellone, held the title of count of Razes the title
Sigisbert is said to have possessed and passed on to his descendants.
Guillem de Gellone was one of the most famous men of his time, so much
so, indeed, that his historical reality -like that of Charlemagne and
Godfroi de Bouillon has been obscured by legend. Before the epoch of
the
268
Crusades, there were at least six major epic poems composed about him,
chansons de gqste similar to the famous Chanson de
Roland. In The Divine Comedy Dante accorded him a uniquely exalted status.
But even before Dante, Guillem had again become an object of literary
attention. In the early thirteenth century he figured as the
protagonist of
Willehalm, an unfinished epic romance composed by Wolfram von Eschenbach whose
most famous work, Parzival, is probably the most important of all romances dealing with
the mysteries of the Holy Grail.
It seemed to us somewhat curious at first that Wolfram -all of whose
other work deals with the Grail, the "Grail family' and the lineage of
the "Grail family' should suddenly devote himself to so radically
different a theme as Guillem de
Gellone. On the other hand, Wolfram stated in another poem that the "Grail castle', abode
of the "Grail family', was situated in the Pyrenees in what, at the beginning of the ninth
century, was Guillem de Gellone's domain.
Guillem maintained a close rapport with Charlemagne. His sister, in fact, was married to
one of Charlemagne's sons, thus establishing a. dynastic link with the imperial blood. And
Guillem himself was one of Charlemagne's most important commanders in the incessant
warfare against the Moors. In 803, shortly after Charlemagne's coronation as Holy
Roman Emperor, Guillem captured Barcelona, doubling his own territory and extending
his influence across the Pyrenees. So grateful was Charlemagne for his services that his
principality was confirmed by the emperor as a permanent institution. The charter ratifying
this has been lost or destroyed, but there is abundant testimony to its existence.
Independent and unimpugnable authorities have provided detailed
genealogies of Guillem de Gellone's line his family and descendants. z9
These sources, however, provide no indication of Guillem's antecedents,
except for his father, Theodoric. In short, the real origins of the
family were shrouded in mystery. And contemporary scholars and
historians are generally somewhat puzzled about the enigmatic
appearance, as if by spontaneous combustion, of so influential a noble
house. But one thing, at any rate, is certain. By 886 the line of
Guillem de Gellone culminated in a certain Bernard
269
Plantavelu, who established the duchy of Aquitaine. In other words
Guillem's line culminated in precisely the same individual as the line ascribed by the
"Prieur6 documents' to Sigisbert IV and his descendants.
We were tempted, of course, to jump to conclusions, and use the
genealogies in the "Prieur6 documents' to bridge the gap left by
accepted history. We were tempted to assume that the elusive
progenitors of Guillem de Gellone were Dagobert II, and Sigisbert IV
and the main line of the deposed
Merovingian dynasty the line cited in the "Prieur6 documents' under the name Plant-Ard or
Plantard.
Unfortunately we could not do so. Given the confused state of existing records, we could
not definitively establish the precise connection between the Plantard line and the line of
Guillem de Gellone. They might indeed have been one and the same. On the other hand,
they might have intermarried at some point. What remained certain, however, was that
both lines, by 886, had culminated in Bernard Plantavelu and the dukes of Aquitaine.
Although they did not always match precisely in dating and translation of names, the
genealogies connected with Guillem de Gellone did constitute a certain independent
confirmation for the genealogies in the "Prieur6 documents'. We could thus tentatively
accept, in the absence of any contradictory evidence, that the Merovingian bloodline did
continue, more or less as the "Prieur6 documents' maintained. We could tentatively
accept that Sigisbert did survive his father's murder, did adopt the family name of Plantard
and, as count of Razes, did perpetuate his father's lineage.
Prince Ursus
By 886, of course, the "flowering shoot of the Merovingian vine' had blossomed into a
large and complicated family tree. Bernard Plantavelu and the dukes of Aquitaine
constitute one branch. There were other branches as well. Thus the "Prieur6 documents'
declare that Sigisbert IV's grandson, Sigisbert VI, was known by the name of "Prince
Ursus'.
Between 877 and 879 "Prince Ursus' is said to have been officially
proclaimed "King Ursus'. Aided by two nobles Bernard dAuvergne and
270
the marquis of Gothic he is said to have undertaken an insurrection
against Louis II of France in an attempt to regain his rightful heritage.
Independent historians confirm that such an insurrection did indeed occur between 877
and 879. These same historians refer to Bernard dAuvergne and the marquis of Gothic.
The leader, or instigator, of the insurrection is not specifically named as Sigisbert VI. But
there are references to an individual known as "Prince Ursus'. Moreover, "Prince Ursus' is
known to have been involved in a curious and elaborate ceremony in Nimes, at which five
hundred assembled ecclesiastics chanted the Te Deum.3 From all accounts of it, this
ceremony would seem to have been a coronation. It may well have been the coronation
to which the "Prieure documents' alluded the proclamation of "Prince Ursus' as king.
Once again, the "Prieure documents' received independent support. Once
again, they seemed to draw on information unobtainable elsewhere
information which supplemented and sometimes even helped explain
caesuras in accepted history. In this case, they had apparently told
us who the elusive "Prince Ursus' actually was -the lineal descendant,
through
Sigisbert IV, of the murdered Dagobert II. And the insurrection, of
which historians had hitherto made no sense, could now be seen as a
perfectly comprehensible attempt by the deposed Merovingian dynasty to
regain its heritage the heritage conferred upon it by Rome through the
pact with
Clovis, and then subsequently betrayed.
According to both the "Prieure documents' and independent sources, the
insurrection failed, "Prince Ursus' and his supporters being defeated
at a battle near Poitiers in 881 . With this setback, the Plantard
family is said to have lost its possessions in the south of France
although it still clung to the now purely titular status of duke of
Rhedae and count of
Razes. "Prince Ursus' is said to have died in Brittany, while his line
became allied by marriage with the Breton ducal house. By the late
ninth century, then, the Merovingian blood had flowed into the duchies
of both
Brittany and Aquitaine.
In the years that followed, the family including Alain, later duke of
Brittany is said to have sought refuge in England, establishing an
271
English branch called "Planta'. 3 The Merovingian Dynasty The Counts
of Rues
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272
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authorities again confirm that Alain, his family and entourage, fled
from the Vikings to England. According to the "Prieure documents', one
of the English branch of the family, listed as Bera VI, was nicknamed
'the
Architect'. He and his descendants, having found a haven in England
under
King Athelstan, are said to have practised 'the art of building' - a
seemingly enigmatic reference. Interestingly enough, Masonic sources
date the origin of Freemasonry in England from the reign of King
Athelstan.3'
Could the Merovingian bloodline, we wondered, in addition to its claim
to the French throne, be in some way connected with something at the
core of
Freemasonry?
The Grail Family
The Middle Ages abound with a mythology as rich and resonant as those of ancient
Greece and Rome. Some of this mythology pertains, although wildly exaggerated in form,
to actual historical personages to Arthur, to Roland and Charlemagne, to Rodrigo Diaz of
Vivar, popularly known as El Cid. Other myths like those relating to the Grail, for example
would seem at first to rest on a more tenuous foundation.
Among the most popular and evocative of medieval myths is that of
Lohengrin, the "Swan Knight'. On the one hand it is closely linked with the fabulous Grail
romances; on the other it cites specific historical personages. In its mingling of fact and
fantasy it may well be unique. And through such works as Wagner's opera it continues to
exert its archetypal appeal even today.
According to medieval accounts, Lohengrin sometimes called Helias,
implying solar associations was a scion of the elusive and mysterious
"Grail family'. In Wolfram von Eschenbach's poem, he is in fact the
son of
Parzival, the supreme' Knight of the Grail'. One day, in the sacred
temple or castle of the Grail at Munsalvaesche, Lohengrin is said to
have heard the chapel bell tolling without the intervention of human
hands a signal that his aid was urgently required somewhere in the
world. It was required, predictably enough, by a damsel in distress
273
the duchess of Brabant32 according to some sources, the duchess of
Bouillon according to others. The lady desperately needed a champion, and Lohengrin
hastened to her rescue in a boat drawn by heraldic swans. In single combat he defeated
the duchess's persecutor, then married the lady. At their nuptials, however, he issued a
stringent warning. Never was his bride to query him about his origins or ancestry, his
background or the place whence he came. And for some years the lady obeyed her
husband's edict. At last, however, goaded to fatal curiosity by the scurrilous insinuations
of rivals, she presumed to ask the forbidden question.
Thereupon, Lohengrin was compelled to depart, vanishing in his swan drawn boat into the
sunset. And behind him, with his wife, he left a child of uncertain lineage. According to
the various accounts, this child was either the father or the grandfather of Godfroi de
Bouillon.
It is difficult for the modern mind to appreciate the magnitude of
Godfroi's status in popular consciousness -not only in his own time but
even as late as the seventeenth century. Today, when one thinks of
the
Crusades, one thinks of Richard Coeur de Lion, King John, perhaps Louis IX (Saint Louis)
or Frederick Barbarossa. But until relatively recently, none of these individuals enjoyed
Godfroi's prestige or acclaim. Godfroi, leader of the First Crusade, was the supreme
popular hero, the hero par excellence. It was Godfroi who inaugurated the Crusades. It
was Godfroi who captured Jerusalem from the Saracens. It was Godfroi who rescued
Christ's sepulchre from infidel hands. It was Godfroi, above all others, who, in people's
imaginations, reconciled the ideals of high chivalric enterprise and fervent Christian piety.
Not surprisingly, therefore, Godfroi became the object of a cult which persisted long after
his death.
Given this exalted status, it is understandable that Godfroi should be
credited with all manner of illustrious mythical pedigrees. It is even
understandable that Wolfram von Eschenbach, and other medieval
romanciers, should link him directly with the Grail should depict him
as a lineal descendant of the mysterious "Grail family'. And such
fabulous pedigrees are rendered even more comprehensible by the fact
that Godfroi's true lineage is obscure. History remains uncomfortably
274
uncertain about his ancestry.33 The Prieure documents' furnished us
with the most plausible perhaps, indeed, the first plausible -genealogy of Godfroi de
Bouillon that has yet come to light. As far as this genealogy could be checked and much
of it could be it proved accurate. We found no evidence to contradict it, much to support it;
and it convincingly bridged a number of perplexing historical gaps.
According to the genealogy in the "Prieure documents', Godfroi de
Bouillon by virtue of his great-grandmother, who married Hugues de
Plantard in 1009 was a lineal descendant of the Plantard family. In
other words
Godfroi was of Merovingian blood, directly descended from Dagobert
II,
Sigisbert IV and the line of Merovingian "lost kings' - "les rois perdus'.
For four centuries the Merovingian blood royal appears to have flowed through gnarled
and numerous family trees. At last, through a process analogous to the grafting of vines
in viticulture, it would seem to have borne fruit in Godfroi de Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine.
And here, in the house of Lorraine, it established a new patrimony.
This revelation cast a significant new light on the Crusades. We could
now perceive the Crusades from a new perspective, and discern in them
something more than the symbolic gesture of reclaiming Christ's
supulchre from the
Saracens.
In his own eyes, as well as those of his supporters, Godfroi would have been more than
duke of Lorraine. He would, in fact, have been a rightful king a legitimate claimant of the
dynasty deposed with Dagobert II in 679. But if Godfroi was a rightful king, he was also a
king without a kingdom; and the Capetian dynasty in France, supported by the Roman
Church, was by then too well entrenched to be dethroned.
What can one do if one is a king without a kingdom? Perhaps find a
kingdom,
Or create a kingdom. The most precious kingdom in the entire world
Palestine, the Holy Land, the soil trodden by Jesus himself. Would not
the ruler of such a kingdom be comparable to any in Europe? And would
he not, in presiding over that most sacred of earthly sites, obtain
sweet revenge on the Church which betrayed his ancestors four centuries
275
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MATIEUOE- sTEP~EIB~EN d EIIAI The Elusive Mystery
Gradually certain pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fall into
place. If
Godfroi was of Merovingian blood, a number of seemingly disconnected fragments ceased
to be disconnected and assumed a coherent continuity.
We could thus explain the emphasis accorded such apparently disparate
elements as the Merovingian dynasty and the Crusades, Dagobert II and
Godfroi,
RennesleChateau, the Knights Templar, the house of Lorraine, the
Prieure de
Sion. We could even trace the Merovingian bloodlines up to the present
day to Alain Poher, to Henri de Montpezat (consort of the queen of
Denmark), to Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair, to Otto von Habsburg,
titular duke of
Lorraine and king of Jerusalem.
And yet the really crucial question continued to elude us. We still could not see why the
Merovingian bloodline should be so inexplicably important today. We still could not see
why its claim should be in any way relevant to contemporary affairs, or why it should
command the allegiance of so many distinguished men through the centuries. We still
could not see why a modern Merovingian monarchy, however technically legitimate it
might be, warranted such urgent endorsement.
278
Quite clearly we were overlooking something. 10 The Exiled Tribe
Could there be something special about the Merovingian bloodline something more than
an academic, technical legitimacy? Could there really be something which, in some way,
might genuinely matter to people today? Could there be something that might affect,
perhaps even alter, existing social, political or religious institutions? These questions
continued to nag at us. As yet, however, there appeared to be no answer to them.
Once again we sifted through the compilation of "Prieure documents', and especially the
all-important Dossiers secrets. We re-read passages which had meant nothing to us
before. Now they made sense, but they did not serve to explain the mystery, nor to
answer what had now become the critical questions. On the other hand there were other
passages whose relevance was still unclear to us. These passages by no means
resolved the enigma: but, if nothing else, they set us thinking along certain lines lines
which eventually proved to be of paramount significance.
As we had already discovered, the Merovingians themselves, according to
their own chroniclers, claimed descent from ancient Troy. But
according to certain of the "Prieure documents' the Merovingian
pedigree was older than the siege of Troy. According to certain of the
Prieure documents', the
Merovingian pedigree could in fact be traced back to the Old Testament.
Among the genealogies in the Dossiers secrets, for example, there were
numerous footnotes and annotations. Many of these referred
specifically to one of the twelve tribes of ancient Israel, the Tribe
of Benjamin. One such reference cites, and emphasises, three Biblical
passages -Deuteronomy 33,
Joshua 1 8 and judges 20 and 21 .
Deuteronomy 33 contains the blessing pronounced by Moses on the
279
patriarchs of each of the twelve tribes. Of Benjamin, Moses says,
"The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by him; and the Lord
shall cover him all the day long, and he shall dwell between his
shoulders." (33:12) In other words Benjamin and his descendants were
singled out for a very special and exalted blessing. That much, at any
rate, was clear. We were, of course, puzzled by the promise of the
Lord dwelling 'between Benjamin's shoulders'. Should we associate it
with the legendary
Merovingian birthmark the red cross between the shoulders? The
connection seemed somewhat far-fetched. On the other hand, there were
other clearer similarities between Benjamin in the Old Testament and
the subject of our investigation. According to Robert Graves, for
example, the day sacred to
Benjamin was December 23rd' - Dagobert's feast day. Among the three clans which
comprised the Tribe of Benjamin, there was the clan of Ahiram which might in some
obscure way pertain to Hiram, builder of the Temple of Solomon and central figure in
Masonic tradition. Hiram's most devoted disciple, moreover, was named Benoni; and
Benoni, interestingly enough, was the name originally conferred upon the infant Benjamin
by his mother, Rachel, before she died.
The second Biblical reference in the Dossiers secrets, to Joshua 18, is
rather more clear. It deals with the arrival of Moses's people in
the
Promised Land and the apportionment to each of the twelve tribes of
particular tracts of territory. According to this apportionment, the
territory of the Tribe of Benjamin included what subsequently became
the sacred city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem, in other words, even before
it became the capital of David and Solomon, was the allocated
birthright of the Tribe of Benjamin. According to Joshua 18:28, the
birthright of the Benjamites encompassed "Zelah, Eleph and Jebusi,
which is Jerusalem, Gibeath and
Kirjath; fourteen cities with their villages. This is the inheritance of the children of
Benjamin according to their families."
The third Biblical passage cited by the Dossiers secrets involves a
fairly complex sequipnce of events. A Levite, travelling through
Benjamite territory, is assaulted, and his concubine ravished, by
worshippers of
Belial a variant of the Sumerian Mother Goddess, known as Ishtar by
the
Babylonians and Astarte by the Phoenicians.
280
Calling representatives of the twelve tribes to witness, the Levite
demands vengeance for the atrocity; and at a council, the Benjamites are instructed to
deliver the malefactors to justice. One might expect the Benjamites to comply readily. For
some reason, however, they do not, and undertake, by force of arms, to protect the "sons
of Belial'.
The result is a bitter and bloody war between the Benjamites and the
remaining eleven tribes. In the course of hostilities a curse is
pronounced by the latter on any man who gives his daughter to a Beni
amite. When the war is over, however, and the
Benjamites virtually exterminated, the victorious Israelites repent of their malediction
which, however, cannot be retracted:
Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpeh, saying, There shall not any
of us give his daughter unto Benjamin to wife. And the people came to
the house of God, and abode there till even before God, and lifted up
their voices, and wept sore; And said, O Lord God of Israel, why is
this come to pass in
Israel, that there should be today one tribe lacking in Isreal?
(Judges 21:1-3)
A few verses later, the lament is repeated:
And the children of Israel repented them for Benjamin their brother, and said, There is one
tribe cut off from Israel this day. How shall we do for wives for them that remain, seeing
we have sworn by the Lord that we will not give them of our daughters to wives? (Judges
21:6-7)
And yet again:
And the people repented them for Benjamin, because that the Lord had
made a breach in the tribes of Israel. Then the elders of the
congregation said,
How shall we do for wives for them that remain, seeing the women are
destroyed out of Benjamin? And they said, There must be an inheritance
for them that be escaped out of Benjamin, that a tribe be not destroyed
out of
Israel. Howbeit we may not give them wives of our daughters: for the
children of Israel have sworn, saying, Cursed be he that giveth a wife
to
Benjamin. (Judges 21:15-18)
Confronted by the possible extinction of an entire tribe, the elders
281
quickly devise a solution. At Shiloh, in Bethel, there is to be a
festival shortly; and the women of Shiloh -whose menfolk had remained neutral in the war
are to be considered fair game. The surviving Benjamites are instructed to go to Shiloh
and wait in ambush in the vineyards. When the women of the town congregate to dance
in the forthcoming festival, the Benjamites are to pounce upon them and take them to wife.
It is not at all clear why the Dossiers secrets insist on calling
attention to this passage. But whatever the reason, the Benjamites, so
far as
Biblical history is concerned, are clearly important. Despite the devastation of the war,
they quickly recover in prestige, if not in numbers. Indeed, they recover so well that in 1
Samuel they furnish Israel with her first king, Saul.
Whatever recovery the Benjamites may have made, however, the Dossiers
secrets imply that the war over the followers of Belial was a crucial
turning point. 1t would seem that in the wake of this conflict many,
if not most, Benjamites went into exile. Thus, there is a portentous
note in the
Dossiers secrets, in capital letters:
ONE DAY THE DESCENDANTS OF BENJAMIN LEFT THEIR
COUNTRY; CERTAIN REMAINED; TWO THOUSAND YEARS LATER
GODFROI VI [DE BOUILLON] BECAME KING OF JERUSALEM AND
FOUNDED THE ORDRE DE SION.Z
At first there appeared to be no connection between these apparent non
sequiturs. When we assembled the diverse and fragmentary references in
the
Dossiers secrets, however, a coherent story began to emerge. According
to this account' most Benjamites did go into exile. Their exile
supposedly took them to Greece, to the central Peloponnese to Arcadia,
in short, where they supposedly became aligned with the Arcadian royal
line. Towards the advent of the Christian era, they are then said to
have migrated up the
Danube and the Rhine, intermarrying with certain Teutonic tribes and eventually
engendering the Sicambrian Franks the immediate forebears of the Merovingians.
According to the "Prieure documents', then, the Merovingians were
descended, via Arcadia, from the Tribe of Benjamin. In other words
the
Merovingians, as well as their subsequent descendants the bloodlines
of
282
Plantard and Lorraine, for example were ultimately of Map 8Judaea,
Showing the only Avenue of Escape for the Tribe of Benjamin
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Moun, Lebanon
- Mourn Hcrmon
C,
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283
Semitic or Israelite origin. And if Jerusalem was indeed the
hereditary birthright of the Benjamites, Godfroi de Bouillon, in
marching on the Holy
City, would in fact have been reclaiming his ancient and rightful heritage.
Again it is significant that Godfroi, alone among the august Western princes who
embarked on the First Crusade, disposed of all his property before his departure -implying
thereby that he did not intend to return to Europe.
Needless to say, we had no way of ascertaining whether the Merovingians were of
Benjamite origin or not. The information in the "Prieure documents', such as it was,
related to too remote; too obscure a past, for which no confirmation, no records of any sort
could be obtained.
But the assertions were neither particularly unique nor particularly
new. On the countrary they had been around, in the form of vague
rumours and nebulous traditions, for a long time. To cite but one
instance, Proust draws upon them in his opus; and more recently, the
novelist jean d'Ormesson suggests a Judaic origin for certain noble
French families. And in 1965 Roger
Peyrefitte, who seems to like scandal ising his countrymen, did so with resounding eclat in
a novel affirming all French and most European nobility to be ultimately Judaic.
In fact the argument, although unprovable, is not altogether
implausible, nor are the exile and migration ascribed to the Tribe of
Benjamin in the "Prieure documents'. The Tribe of Benjamin took up
arms on behalf of the followers of Belial a form of the Mother Goddess
often associated with images of a bull or calf. There is reason to
believe that the Benjamites themselves revered the same deity. Indeed,
it is possible that the worship of the Golden Calf in Exodus the
subject, significantly enough, of one of
Poussin's most famous paintings may have been a specifically Benjamite ritual.
Following their war against the other eleven tribes of Israel, Benjamites fleeing into exile
would, of necessity, have had to flee westwards, towards the Phoenician coast. The
Phoenicians possessed ships capable of transporting large numbers of refugees. And
they would have been obvious allies for fugitive Benjamites for they, too, worshipped the
Mother Goddess in the form of Astarte, Queen of Heaven.
284
If there was actually an exodus of Benjamites from Palestine, one
might hope to find some vestigial record of it. In Greek myth one does. There is the
legend of King Belus's son, one Danaus, who arrives in Greece, with his daughters, by
ship. His daughters are said to have introduced the cult of the Mother Goddess, which
became the established cult of the Arcadians. According to Robert Graves, the Danaus
myth records the arrival in the Peloponnesus of "colonists from Palestine'."
Graves states that King Belus is in fact Baal, or Bel or perhaps Belial
from the Old
Testament. It is also worthy of note that one of the clans of the
Tribe of
Benjamin was the clan of Bela.
In Arcadia the cult of the Mother Goddess not only prospered but
survived longer than in any other part of Greece. It became associated
with worship of Demeter, then of Diana or Artemis. Known regionally as
Arduina, Artemis became tutelary deity of the Ardennes; and it was from
the Ardennes that the Sicambrian Franks first issued into what is now
France. The totem of
Artemis was the she-bear Kallisto, whose son was Arkas, the bear-child and patron of
Arcadia. And Kallisto, transported to the heavens by Artemis, became the constellation
Ursa Major, the Great Bear. There might thus be something more than coincidence in the
appellation "Ursus', applied repeatedly to the Merovingian bloodline.
In any case there is other evidence, apart from mythology, suggesting
a
Judaic migration to Arcadia. In classical times the region known as
Arcadia was ruled by the powerful, militaristic state of Sparta. The
Spartans absorbed much of the older Arcadian culture; and indeed, the
legendary
Arcadian Lycaeus may in fact be identified with Lycurgus, who
codified
Spartan Law. On reaching manhood, the Spartans, like the Merovingians,
ascribed a special, magical significance to their hair which, like
the
Merovingians, they wore long. According to one authority, "the length
of hair denoted their physical vigour and became a sacred symbol. '4
What is more, both books of Maccabees in the Apocrypha stress the link
between
Spartans and Jews. Maccabees 2 speaks of certain Jews "having embarked
to go to the Lacedaemonians, in hope of finding protection there
because of their kinship. "5 And Maccabees 1 states explicitly, "It has
been found in writing concerning the Spartans and the Jews that they
285
are brethren and are of the family of Abraham. "6 We could thus
acknowledge at least the possibility of a Judaic migration to
Arcadia so that the "Prieure documents', if they could not be proved
correct, could not be dismissed either. As for Semitic influence on
Frankish culture, there was solid archaeological evidence. Phoenician
or
Semitic trade routes traversed the whole of southern France, from Bordeaux to Marseilles
and Narbonne. They also extended up the Rhone. As early as 700-600 B.C." there were
Phoenician settlements not only along the French coast but inland as well, at such sites as
Carcassonne and Toulouse. Among the artefacts found at these sites were many of
Semitic origin. This is hardly surprising. In the ninth century B.C. the Phoenician kings of
Tyre had intermarried with the kings of Israel and Judah, thus establishing a dynastic
alliance that would have engendered a close contact between their respective peoples.
The sack of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, and the destruction of the Temple,
prompted a massive exodus of Jews from the Holy Land. Thus the city
of
Pompeii, buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79, included a Jewish community.
Certain cities in southern France Aries, for example, Lunel and Narbonne provided a
haven for Jewish refugees around the same time.
And yet the influx of Judaic peoples into Europe, and especially
France, predated the fall of Jerusalem in the first century. In fact
it had been in progress from before the Christian era. Between 106 and
48 B.C. a Jewish colony was established in Rome. Not long after
another such colony was founded far up the Rhine, at Cologne. Certain
Roman legions included contingents of Jewish slaves, who accompanied
their masters all over
Europe. Many of these slaves eventually won, purchased or, in some other fashion,
obtained their freedom and formed communities.
In consequence there are many specifically Semitic place names
scattered about France. Some of them are situated squarely in the Old
Merovingian heartland. A few kilometres from Stenay, for example, on
the fringe of the
Forest of Woevres where Dagobert was assassinated, there is a village
called Baalon. Between Stenay and Orval, there is a town called
Avioth. And the mountain of Sion in Lorraine "la colline inspiree' was
originally
286
Mount Semita." Again then, while we could not prove the claims in the
"Prieure documents', we could not discount them either. Certainly there was enough
evidence to render them at least plausible. We were compelled to acknowledge that the
"Prieure documents' might be correct that the Merovingians, and the various noble
families descended from them, might have stemmed from Semitic sources.
But could this, we wondered, really be all there was to the story? Could this really be the
portentous secret which had engendered so much fuss and intrigue, so much machination
and mystery, so much controversy and conflict through the centuries? Merely another lost
tribe legend?
And even if it were not legend but true, could it really explain the
motivation of the
Prieure de Sion and the claim of the Merovingian dynasty? Could it
really explain the adherence of men like Leonardo and Newton or the
activities of the houses of Guise and Lorraine, the covert endeavours
of the Compagnie du
Saint-Sacrement, the elusive secrets of "Scottish Rite' Freemasonry?
Obviously not. Why should descent from the Tribe of Benjamin
constitute so explosive a secret? And, perhaps most crucially, why
should descent from the Tribe of Benjamin matter today? How could it
possibly clarify the
Prieure de Sion's present-day activities and objectives?
If our inquiry involved vested interests that were specifically Semitic
or
Judaic, moreover, why did it involve so many components of a
specifically, even fervently, Christian character? The pact between
Clovis and the Roman
Church, for example; the avowed Christianity of Godfroi de Bouillon and
the conquest of Jerusalem; the heretical, perhaps, but none the less
Christian thought of the Cathars and Knights Templar; pious
institutions like the
Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement; Freemasonry that was "Hermetic, aristocratic and
Christian', and the implication of so many Christian ecclesiastics, from high ranking
princes of the Church to local village cures like Boudet and Sauniere?
It might be that the Merovingians were ultimately of Judaic origin, but
if this were so it seemed to us essentially incidental. Whatever the
real secret underlying our investigation it appeared to be inextricably
associated not with Old Testament Judaism, but with Christianity. In
287
short, the Tribe of Benjamin for the moment, at least -seemed to be a
red herring. However important it might be, there was something of even greater
importance involved. We were still overlooking something.
288
Three The Bloodline
289
11 The Holy Grail
What might we have been overlooking? Or, alternatively, what might we have been
seeking in the wrong place? Was there perhaps some fragment that had been before our
eyes all along which, for one reason or another, we had failed to notice? As far as we
could determine, we had overlooked no item, no data of accepted historical scholarship.
But might there be something else -something that lay "beyond the pale' of documented
history, the concrete facts to which we had endeavoured to confine ourselves?
Certainly there was one motif, admittedly fabulous, which had threaded
itself through our investigation, recurring repeatedly, with insistent
and intriguing consistency. This as the mysterious object known as the
Holy
Grail. By their contemporaries, for-example, the Cathars were believed
to have been in possession of the Grail. The Templars, too, were often
regarded as the Grail's custodians; and the Grail romances had
originally issued from the court of the count of Champagne, who was
intimately associated with the foundation of the Knights Templar. When
the Templars were suppressed, moreover, the bizarre heads they
supposedly worshipped enjoyed, according to the official Inquisition
reports, many of the attributes traditionally ascribed to the Grail
-providing sustenance, for example, and imbuing the land with fertility.
In the course of our investigation we had run across the Grail in
numerous other contexts as well. Some had been relatively recent, such
as the occult circles of Josephin Peladan and Claude Debussy at the end
of the nineteenth century. Others were considerably older. Godfroi de
Bouillon, for instance, was descended according to medieval legend and
folklore from Lohengrin, the
290
Knight of the Swan; and Lohengrin, in the romances, was the son of
Perceval or Parzival, protagonist of all the early Grail stories.
Guillem de Gellone, moreover, ruler of the medieval principality in
southern France during the reign of Charlemagne, was the hero of a poem
by Wolfram von
Eschenbach, most important of the Grail chroniclers. Indeed, the
Guillem in
Wolfram's poem was said to have been associated in some way with the mysterious "Grail
family'.
Were these intrusions of the Grail into our inquiry, and others like them, merely random
and coincidental? Or was there a continuity underlying and connecting them a continuity
which, in some unimaginable way, did link our inquiry to the Grail, whatever the Grail
might really be? At this point, we were confronted by a staggering question. Could the
Grail be something more than pure fantasy? Could it actually have existed in some
sense? Could there really have been such a thing as the Holy Grail? Or something
concrete, at any rate, for which the Holy Grail was employed as a symbol?
The question was certainly exciting and provocative -to say the least.
At the same time it threatened to take us too far afield, into spheres
of spurious speculation. It did, however, serve to direct our
attention to the
Grail romances themselves. And in themselves the Grail romances posed a number of
perplexing and distinctly relevant conundrums.
It is generally assumed that the Holy Grail relates in some way to Jesus.
According to some traditions, it was the cup from which Jesus and his disciples drank at
the Last Supper. According to other traditions, it was the cup in which Joseph of
Arimathea caught Jesus's blood as he hung on the cross. According to other traditions
still, the Grail was both of these.
But if the Grail was so intimately associated with Jesus, or if it did indeed exist, why was
there no reference to it whatever for more than a thousand years? Where was it during all
that time? Why did it not figure in earlier literature, folklore or tradition? Why should
something of such intense relevance and immediacy to Christendom remain buried for as
long as it apparently did?
More provocatively still, why should the Grail finally surface
precisely when it did at the very peak of the Crusades? Was it
291
coincidence that this enigmatic object, ostensibly non-existent for
ten centuries, should assume the status it did at the very time it did
when the Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem was in its full glory, when the
Templars were at the apex of their power, when the
Cathar heresy was gaining a momentum which actually threatened to displace the creed
of Rome? Was this convergence of circumstances truly coincidental?
Or was there some link between them?
Inundated and somewhat daunted by questions of this kind, we turned our attention to the
Grail romances. Only by examining these "fantasies' closely could we hope to determine
whether their recurrence in our inquiry was indeed coincidental, or the manifestation of a
pattern a pattern which might, in some way, prove significant.
The Legend of the Holy Grail
Most twentieth-century scholarship concurs in the belief that the Grail romances rest
ultimately on a pagan foundation a ritual connected with the cycle of the seasons, the
death and rebirth of the year. In its most primordial origins it would appear to involve a
vegetation cult, closely related in form to, if not directly derived from those of Tammuz,
Attis, Adonis and Osiris in the Middle East. Thus, in both Irish and Welsh mythology,
there are repeated references to death, rebirth and renewal, as well as to a similar
regenerative process in the land sterility and fertility. The theme is central to the
anonymous fourteenth-century English poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. And in
the Mabinogion, a compilation of Welsh legends roughly contemporary with the Grail
romances though obviously drawing on much earlier material, there is a mysterious
"cauldron of rebirth' in which dead warriors, thrown at nightfall, are resurrected the
following morning. This cauldron is often associated with a giant hero named Bran. Bran
also possessed a platter and 'whatever food one wished thereon was instantly obtained' -
a property also sometimes ascribed to the Grail. At the end of his life, moreover, Bran
was supposedly decapitated and his head placed, as a sort of talisman, in London.
292
Here it was said to perform a number of magical functions not only
ensuring fertility of the land but also, by some occult power, repelling invaders.
Many of these motifs were subsequently incorporated into the Grail romances. There is
no question that Bran, with his cauldron and platter, contributed something to later
conceptions of the Grail. And Bran's head shares attributes not only with the Grail, but
also with the heads allegedly worshipped by the Knights Templar.
The pagan foundation for the Grail romances has been exhaustively explored by scholars,
from Sir James Frazer in The Golden Bough up to the present.
But during the mid to late twelfth century the originally pagan foundation for the Grail
romances underwent a curious and extremely important transformation. In some obscure
way that has eluded the investigation of researchers, the Grail became very uniquely and
specifically associated with Christianity and with a rather unorthodox form of Christianity at
that. On the basis of some elusive amalgamation, the Grail became inextricably linked
with Jesus. And there seems to have been something more involved than a facile grafting
of pagan and Christian traditions.
As a relic linked mystically with Jesus, the Grail engendered a
voluminous quantity of romances, or lengthy narrative poems, which,
even today, tease the imagination. Despite clerical disapprobation,
these romances flourished for nearly a century, becoming a fully
fledged cult of their own a cult whose lifespan, interestingly enough,
closely paralleled that of the Order of the Temple after its separation
from the Prieure de Sion in 1 1 88. With the fall of the Holy Land in
1291, and the dissolution of the Templars between 1307 and 1314, the
Grail romances also vanished from the stage of history, for another two
centuries or so, at any rate. Then, in 1470, the theme was taken up
again by Sir Thomas Malory in his famous Le Morte d'Arthur; and it has
remained more or less prominent in Western culture ever since. Nor has
its context always been wholly literary. There seems to be abundant
documentary evidence that certain members of the National
Socialist hierarchy in Germany actually believed in the Grail's physical existence, and
excavations for it were actually undertaken during the war in the south of France."
293
By Malory's time the mysterious object known as the Grail had assumed
the more or less distinct identity ascribed to it today.
It was alleged to be the cup of the Last Supper, in which Joseph of
Arimathea later caught Jesus's blood. According to certain accounts,
the
Grail was brought by Joseph of Arimathea to England more specifically,
to
Glastonbury. According to other accounts, it was brought by the
Magdalene to
France. As early as the fourth century legends describe the Magdalene fleeing the Holy
Land and being set ashore near Marseilles where, for that matter, her purported relics are
still venerated. According to medieval legends, she carried with her to Marseilles the Holy
Grail. By the fifteenth century this tradition had clearly assumed immense importance for
such individuals as King Rene d'Anjou, who collected "Grail cups'.
But the early legends say that the Magdalene brought the Grail into France, not a cup. In
other words, the simple association of Grail and cup was a relatively late development.
Malory perpetuated- this facile association, and it has been a truism ever since. But
Malory, in fact, took considerable liberties with his original sources. In these original
sources, the Grail is something much more than a cup. And the mystical aspects of the
Grail are far more important than the chivalric, which Malory extols.
In the opinion of most scholars the first genuine Grail romance dates
from the late twelfth century, from around 1 188 that crucial year which
witnessed the fall of Jerusalem and the alleged rupture between the
Order of the Temple and the Prieur6 de Sion. The romance in question
is entitled
Le Roman de~Perceval or Le Conte del Graal . It was composed by one Chretien de
Troyes, who seems to have been attached, in some indeterminate capacity, to the court of
the-count of Champagne.
Little is known of Chretien's biography. His association with the
court of
Champagne is apparent from numerous works composed before his Grail
romance works dedicated to Marie, Countess of Champagne. Through this
corpus of courtly romances including one dealing with Lancelot, which
makes no mention of anything resembling a Grail Chretien by the 1 180s
had established an imposing reputation for himself. And, given his
earlier work, one might have expected him to continue in a similar
294
vein. Towards the end of his life, however, Chretien turned his
attention to a new, hitherto unarticulated theme; and the Holy Grail, as it has come down
to us today, made its official debut in Western culture and consciousness.
Chretien's Grail romance was dedicated not to Marie de Champagne, but
to
Philippe d'Alsace, Count of Flanders. 2 At the beginning of his poem
Chretien declares that his work has been composed specifically at
Philippe's request, and that it was from Philippe that he heard the story in the first place.
The work itself furnishes a general pattern, and constitutes a prototype, for subsequent
Grail narratives. Its protagonist is named Perceval, who is described as the Son of the
Widow Lady'. This appellation is, in itself, both significant and intriguing. It had long been
employed by certain of the dualist and Gnostic heresies -sometimes for their own
prophets, sometimes for Jesus himself. Subsequently i# became a cherished designation
in Freemasonry.
Leaving his widowed mother, Perceval sallies forth to win his knighthood.
During his travels, he comes upon an enigmatic fisherman the famous
"Fisher King' in whose castle he is offered refuge for the night. That evening the Grail
appears. Neither at this point nor at any other in the poem is it linked in any way whatever
with Jesus. In fact the reader learns very little about it. He is not even told what it is. But
whatever it is, it is carried by a damsel, is golden and studded with gems. Perceval does
not know that he is expected to ask a question of this mysterious object he is expected to
ask "whom one serves with it'. The question is obviously ambiguous. If the Grail is a
vessel or a dish of some kind, the question may mean "who is intended to eat from it'.
Alternatively the question might be rephrased: "Whom does one serve (in a chivalric
sense) by virtue of serving the Grail?" Whatever the meaning of the question, Perceval
neglects to ask it; and the next morning when he wakes, the castle is empty. His
omission, he learns subsequently, causes a disastrous blight on the land.
Later still he learns that he himself is of the "Grail family', and that the mysterious "Fisher
King', who was "sustained' by the Grail, was in fact his own uncle. At this point Perceval
makes a curious confession. Since his unhappy experience with the Grail, he declares,
he has ceased to love or believe in God.
295
Chretien's poem is rendered all the more perplexing by the fact that
it is unfinished. Chretien himself died around 1 1 88, quite possibly before he could
complete the work; and even if he did complete it no copy has survived. If such a copy
ever existed, it may well have been destroyed in a fire at Troyes in 1 188. The point need
not be laboured, but certain scholars have found this fire, coinciding as it did with the
poet's death, vaguely suspicious.
In any case Chretien's version of the Grail story is less important in
itself than in its role as precursor. During the next half century the
motif he had introduced at the court of Troyes was to spread through
Western Europe like a brush-fire. At the same time, however, modern experts on the
subject agree that the later Grail romances do not seem to have derived wholly from
Chretien, but seem to have drawn on at least one other source as well a source which, in
all probability, pre-dated Chretien.
And during its proliferation the Grail story became much more closely linked with King
Arthur who was only a peripheral figure in Chretien's version. And it also became linked
with Jesus.
Of the numerous Grail romances which followed Chretien's version, there
were three that proved of special interest and relevance to us. One of
these, the Roman de I'Estoire dou Saint Graal, was composed by Robert
de
Boron, sometime between 1 1 90 and 1 1 99. Justifiably or no, Robert is often credited with
making the Grail a specifically Christian symbol.
Robert himself states that he is drawing on an earlier source and one
quite different from Chretien. In speaking of his poem, and
particularly of the
Grail's Christian character, he alludes to a "great book', the secrets
of which have been revealed to him. 3
It is thus uncertain whether Robert himself Christianised the Grail, or
whether someone else did so before him. Most authorities today incline
towards the second of these possibilities. However, there is no
question that Robert de Boron's account is the first to furnish a
history of the
Grail. The Grail, he explains, was the cup of the Last Supper. It
then passed into the hands of Joseph of Arimathea, who, when Jesus was
removed from the cross, filled it with the Saviour's blood and it is
this sacred blood which confers on the Grail a magical quality. After
the Crucifixion,
296
Robert continues, Joseph's family became the keepers of the Grail.
And for Robert the Grail romances involve the adventures and
vicissitudes of this particular family. Thus Galahad is said to be
Joseph of Arimathea's son. And the Grail itself passes to Joseph's
brother-in-law, Brons, who carries it to England and becomes the
Fisher
King. As in Chretien's poem, Perceval is the "Son of the Widow Lady', but he is also the
grandson of the Fisher King:
Robert's version of the Grail story thus deviates in a number of
important respects from Chretien's. In both versions Perceval is a
"Son of the Widow
Lady', but in Robert's version he is the grandson, not the nephew, of
the
Fisher King and thus even more directly related to the Grail family.
And while Chretien's narrative is vague in its chronology, set sometime
during the Arthurian age, Robert's is quite precise. For Robert, the
Grail story is set in England, and is not contemporary with Arthur but
with Joseph of
Arimathea.
There is another Grail romance which has much in common with Robert's.
Indeed it would seem to draw upon the same sources, but its utilisation
of these sources is very different and decidedly more interesting. The
romance in question is known as the Perlesvaus. It was composed around
the same time as Robert's poem, between 1190 and 1212, by an author
who, contrary to the conventions of the time, chose to remain
anonymous. It is odd that he should have done so, given the exalted
status accorded poets, unless he was involved in some calling a
monastic or military order, for example which would have rendered
composition of such romances unseemly or inappropriate. And, in fact,
the weight of textual evidence concerning the
Perlesvaus suggests this to be the case. According to at least one modern expert, the
Perlesvaus may actually have been written by a Templar. And there is certainly evidence
to support such a conjecture.
It is known, for instance, that the Teutonic Knights encouraged and
sponsored anonymous poets in their ranks, and such a precedent could
well have been established by the Templars. What is more, the author
of the Perlesvaus reveals, in the course of the poem, an almost
extraordinarily detailed knowledge of the realities of fighting of
armour and equipment, strategy and tactics, and weaponry and its
297
effects on human flesh. The graphic description of wounds, for
example, would seem to attest to a first-hand experience of the battlefield a realistic,
unromanticised experience uncharacteristic of any other Grail romance.
If the Perlesvaus was not actually composed by a Templar, it nevertheless provides a
solid basis for linking the Templars with the Grail. Although the Order is not mentioned by
name, its appearance in the poem would seem to be unmistakable. Thus Perceval, in his
wanderings, happens upon a castle. This castle does not house the Grail, but it does
house a conclave of "initiates' who are obviously familiar with the Grail. Perceval is
received here by two "masters' who clap their hands and are joined by thirty-three other
men. "They were clad in white garments, and not one of them but had a red cross in the
midst of his breast, and they seemed to be all of an age. "S One of these mysterious
"masters' states that he has personally seen the Grail an experience vouchsafed only to
an elect few.
And he also states that he is familiar with Perceval's lineage.
Like Chretien's and Robert's poems, the Perlesvaus lays an enormous stress on lineage.
At numerous points Perceval's is described as "most holy'.
Elsewhere it is stated explicitly that Perceval "was of the lineage
of
Joseph of Arimathea', and that "this Joseph was his [Perceval's] mother's uncle, that had
been a soldier of Pilate seven years'."
Nevertheless the Perlesvaus is not set in Joseph's lifetime. On the contrary it takes place,
like Chretien's version, during the age of Arthur.
Chronology is further scrambled by the fact that the Holy Land is already in the hands of
the "infidel' which it wasn't until nearly two centuries after Arthur. And by the fact that the
Holy Land is apparently to be identified with Camelot.
To a greater degree than either Chretien's or Robert's poems, the
Perlesvaus is magical in nature. In addition to his knowledge of the
battlefield, the anonymous author displays a knowledge, quite
surprising for the time, of conjuration and invocation. There are also
numerous alchemical references to two men, for instance, "made of
copper by art of nigromancy'." And some of the magical and alchemical
references resonate with echoes of the mystery surrounding the
298
Templars. Thus, one of the "masters' of the White-clad Templar-like
company says to Perceval, "There are the heads sealed in silver, and
the heads sealed in lead, and the bodies whereunto these heads
belonged; I tell you that you must make come thither the head both of
the King and of the Queen. "e
If the Perlesvaus abounds in magical allusions, it also abounds in other allusions that are
both heretical and/or pagan. Again Perceval is designated by the dualist appellation, "Son
of the Widow Lady'. There are references to a sanctioned ritual of king-sacrifice, most
incongruous in a purportedly Christian poem. There are references to the roasting and
devouring of children a crime of which the Templars were popularly accused. And at one
point there is a singular rite, which again evokes memories of the Templar trials. At a red
cross erected in a forest, a beautiful white beast of indeterminate nature is torn apart by
hounds.
While Perceval watches, a knight and a damsel appear with golden vessels, collect the
fragments of mutilated flesh and, having kissed the cross, disappear into the trees.
Perceval himself then kneels before the cross and kisses it:
and there came to him a smell so sweet of the cross and of the place,
such as no sweetness can be compared therewith. He looketh and see th
coming from the forest two priests all afoot; and the first shouteth to
him: "Sir
Knight, withdraw yourself away from the cross, for no right have you to come nigh it':
Perceval draweth him back, and the priest kneeleth before the cross and adore th it and
boweth down and kisseth it more than a score times, and manifeste th the most joy in the
world. And the other priest cometh after, and bringeth a great rod, and set teth the first
priest aside by force, and bea teth the cross with the rod in every part, and weepeth right
passing sore.
Perceval beholdeth him with right great wonderment and saith unto
him,
"Sir, herein seem you to be no priest! wherefore do you so great
shame?T "Sir," with the priest, "It nought concerneth you of whatsoever
we may do, nor nought shall you know thereof for us!" Had he not been
a priest,
Perceval would have been right wroth with him, but he had no will to do
him any hurt.9
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Such abuse of the cross evokes distinct echoes of the accusations
levelled against the Templars. But not of the Templars alone. It might also reflect a skein
of dualist or Gnostic thought the thought of the Cathars, for instance, who also repudiated
the cross.
In the Perlesvaus this skein of dualist or Gnostic thought extends, in some sense, to the
Grail itself. For Chretien the Grail was something unspecified, made of gold and
encrusted with gems. For Robert de Boron it was identified as the cup used at the Last
Supper and subsequently to collect Jesus's blood. In the Perlesvaus, however, the Grail
assumes a most curious and significant dimension. At one point, Sir Gawain is warned by
a priest, "for behoveth not discover the secrets of the Saviour, and them also to whom
they are committed behoveth keep them covertly'." The Grail, then, involves a secret in
some way related to Jesus; and the nature of this secret is entrusted to a select company.
When Gawain eventually does see the Grail, it "seemeth him that in the
midst of the Graal he see th the figure of a child .. . he looketh up
and it seemeth him to be the Graal all in flesh, and he see th above,
as he thinketh, a King crowned, nailed upon a rood." And some time
later, the
Grail appeared at the sac ring of the mass, in five several manners that none ought not to
tell, for the secret things of the sacrament ought none tell openly, but he unto whom God
hath given it. King Arthur beheld all the changes, the last whereof was the change into a
chalice."
In short the Grail, in the Perlesvaus, consists of a changing sequence of images or
visions. The first of these is a crowned king, crucified. The second is a child. The third is
a man wearing a crown of thorns, bleeding from his forehead, his feet, his palms and his
side. 1 1 The fourth manifestation is not specified. The fifth is a chalice. On each
occasion the manifestation is attended by a fragrance and a great light.
From this account the Grail, in the Perlesvaus, would seem to be
several things simultaneously or something that can be interpreted on
several different levels. On the mundane level, it might well be an
object of some kind -like a cup, bowl or chalice. It would also, in
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some metaphorical sense, appear to be a lineage or perhaps certain
individuals who comprise this lineage. And quite obviously the Grail would also seem to
be an experience of some sort quite likely a Gnostic illumination such as that extolled by
the Cathars and other dualist sects of the period.
The Story of Wolfram von Eschenbach
Of all the Grail romances the most famous, and the most artistically significant, is Parzival,
composed sometime between 1 1 95 and 1 21 6. Its author was Wolfram von Eschenbach,
a knight of Bavarian origin. At first we thought that this might distance him from his
subject, rendering his account less reliable than various others. Before long, however, we
concluded that if anyone could speak authoritatively of the Grail, it was Wolfram.
At the beginning of Parzival, Wolfram boldly asserts that Chretien's version of the Grail
story is wrong, while his own is accurate because based on privileged information. This
information, he later explains, he obtained from one Kyot de Provence who received it in
turn supposedly from one Flegetanis. It is worth quoting Wolfram's words in full:
Anyone who asked me before about the Grail and took me to task for not
telling him was very much in the wrong. Kyot asked me not to reveal
this, for Adventure commanded him to give it no thought until she
herself,
Adventure, should invite the telling, and then one must speak of it, of course.
Kyot, the well-known master, found in Toledo, discarded, set down in heathen writing, the
first source of this adventure. He first had to learn the abc's, but without the art of black
magic .. .
A heathen, Flegetanis, had achieved high renown for his learning. This
scholar of nature was descended from Solomon and born of a family which
had long been Israelite until baptism became our shield against the
fire of Hell. He wrote the adventure of the Grail. On his father's
side,
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Flegetanis was a heathen, who worshipped a calf .. . The heathen
Flegetanis could tell us how all the stars set and rise again . To the circling course of the
stars man's affairs and destiny aye linked. Flegetanis the heathen saw with his own eyes
in the constellations things he was shy to talk about, hidden mysteries. He said there was
a thing called the Grail, whose name he had read clearly in the constellations. A host of
angels left it on the earth.
Since then, baptised men have had the task of guarding it, and with such chaste discipline
that those who are called to the service of the Grail are always noble men. Thus wrote
Flegetanis of these things.
Kyot, the wise master, set about to trace this tale in Latin books, to see where there ever
had been a people, dedicated to purity and worthy of caring for the Grail. He read the
chronicles of the lands, in Britain and elsewhere, in France and in Ireland, and in Anjou lie
found the tale.
There he read the true story of Mazadan, and the exact record of all
his family was written there. "4
Of the numerous items that beg for comment in this passage, it is
important to note at least four. One is that the Grail story
apparently involves the family of an individual named Mazadan. A
second is that the house of Anjou is in some way of paramount
consequence. A third is that the original version of the story seems
to have filtered into Western Europe over the
Pyrenees, from Muslim Spain a perfectly plausible assertion, given the
status Toledo enjoyed as a centre for esoteric studies, both Judaic
and
Muslim. But the most striking element in the passage quoted is that
the
Grail story, as Wolfram explains its derivation, would seem ultimately to be of Judaic
origin. If the Grail is so awesome a Christian mystery, why should its secret be
transmitted by Judaic initiates? For that matter, why should Judaic writers have had
access to specifically Christian material of which Christendom itself was unaware?
Scholars have wasted considerble time and energy debating whether Kyot
and
Flegetanis are real or fictitious. In fact the identity of Kyot, as we had learned from our
study of the Templars, can be fairly solidly established.
302
Kyot de Provence would seem, almost certainly, to have been Guiot de
Provins - a troubadour, monk and spokesman for the Templars who did live in Provence
and ~ who wrote love songs, attacks on the Church, paeans in praise of the Temple and
satirical verses.
Guiot is known to have visited Mayence, in Germany, in 1184. The
occasion was the chivalric festival of Pentecost, at which the Holy
Roman Emperor,
Frederick Barbarossa, conferred knighthood on his sons. As a matter of
course the ceremony was attended by poets and troubadours from all
over
Christendom. As a knight of the Holy Roman Empire, Wolfram would almost certainly
have been present; and it is certainly reasonable to suppose that he and Guiot met.
Learned men were not so very common at the time.
Inevitably they would have clustered together, sought each other out, made each other's
acquaintance; and Guiot may well have found in Wolfram a kindred spirit to whom he
perhaps confided certain information, even if only in symbolic form. And if Guiot permits
Kyot to be accepted as genuine, it is at least plausible to assume that Flegetanis was
genuine as well. If he was not, Wolfram and/or Guiot must have had some special
purpose in creating him. And in giving him the distinctive background and pedigree he is
said to have had.
In addition to the Grail story, Wolfram may have obtained from Guiot a
consuming interest in the Templars. In any case it is known that
Wolfram possessed such an interest. Like Guiot he even made a
pilgrimage to the
Holy Land, where he could observe the Templars in action, at first hand.
And in Parzival he emphasises that the guardians of the Grail and the Grail family are
Templars. This might, of course, be the sloppy chronology and cavalier anachronism of
poetic licence such as can be discerned in some of the other Grail romances. But
Wolfram is much more careful about such things than other writers of his time. Moreover
there are the patent allusions to the Temple in the Perlesvaus. Would both Wolfram and
the author of the Perlesvaus be guilty of the same glaring anachronism?
Possibly. But it is also possible that something is being implied by
these ostentatious connections of the Templars with the Grail. For if
the
Templars are indeed guardians of the Grail, there is one flagrant
implication that the Grail existed not only in Arthurian times, but
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also during the Crusades, when the romances about it were composed. By introducing the
Templars, both Wolfram and the author of the Perlesvaus may be suggesting that the
Grail was not just something of the past, but also something which, for them, possessed
contemporary relevance.
The background to Wolfram's poem is thus as important, in some obscure way, as the text
of the poem itself. Indeed the role of the Templars, like the identity of both Kyot and
Flegetanis, would seem to be crucial; and these factors may well hold a key to the whole
mystery surrounding the Grail.
Unfortunately, the text of Parzival does little to resolve these questions, while posing a
good many others.
In the first place Wolfram not only maintains that his version of the
Grail story, in contrast to Chretien's, is the correct one. He also
maintains that Chretien's account is merely fantastic fable, whereas
his is in fact a species of "initiation document'. In other words, as
Wolfram states quite unequivocally, there is more to the Grail mystery
than meets the eye. And he makes it clear, with numerous references
throughout his poem, that 'the
Grail is not merely an object of gratuitous mystification and fantasy, but a means of
concealing something of immense consequence. Again and again, he hints to his
audience to read between the lines, dropping here and there suggestive hints. At the
same time, he constantly reiterates the urgency of secrecy, "For no man can ever win the
Grail unless he is known in Heaven and he be called by name to the Grail.
115 And 'the Grail is unknown save to those who have been called by
name .. . to the Grail's company. "6
Wolfram is both precise and elusive in identifying the Grail. When it first appears, on
Parzival's sojourn in the Fisher King's castle, there is no real indication of what it is. It
would seem, however, to have something in common with Chretien's vague description of
it:
She [the Queen of the Grail family] was clothed in a dress of Arabian silk. Upon a deep
green achmardi she bore the Perfection of Paradise, both root and branch.
That was a thing called the Grail, which surpasses all earthly
perfection. Repanse de Schoye was the name of her whom the Grail
304
permitted to be its bearer. Such was the nature of the Grail that she
who watched over it had to preserve her purity and renounce all falsity."
Among other things, the Grail, at this point, would seem to be a kind of magical
cornucopia or horn of plenty:
A hundred squires, so ordered, reverently took bread in white napkins
from before the Grail, stepped back in a group and, separating, passed
the bread to all the tables. I was told, and I tell you too, but on
your oath, not mine hence if I deceive you, we are liars all of us that
whatsoever one reached out his hand for, he found it ready, in front of
the Grail, food warm or food cold, dishes new or old, meat tame or
game. "There never was anything like that," many will say. But they
will be wrong in their angry protest, for the Grail was the fruit of
blessedness, such abundance of the sweetness of the world that its
delights were very like what we are told of the kingdom of heaven. "8
All of this is rather mundane in its way, even pedestrian, and the Grail would appear to be
an innocuous enough affair. But later, when Parzival's hermit-uncle expounds on the
Grail, it becomes decidedly more powerful.
After a lengthy disquisition, which includes strands of flagrantly Gnostic thought, the
hermit describes the Grail thus:
Well I know that many brave knights dwell with the Grail at Munsalvaesche.
Always when they ride out, as they often do, it is to seek adventure. They do so for their
sins, these templars, whether their reward be defeat or victory. A valiant host lives there,
and I will tell you how they are sustained. They live from a stone of purest kind. If you do
not know it, it shall here be named to you. It is called lapsit exillis. By the power of that
stone the phoenix burns to ashes, but the ashes give him life again.
Thus does the phoenix molt and change its plumage, which afterwards is
bright and shining and as lovely as before. There never was a human so
ill but that, if he one day sees that stone, he cannot die within the
week that follows. And in looks he will not fade. His appearance will
stay the same, be it maid or man, as on the day he saw the stone, the
305
same as when the best years of his life began, and though he should
see the stone for two hundred years, it will never change, save that
his hair might perhaps turn grey. Such power does the stone give a man
that flesh and bones are at once made young again. The stone is also
called the
Grail."
According to Wolfram, then, the Grail is a stone of some kind. But such a definition of the
Grail is far more provocative than satisfying. Scholars have a number of interpretations of
the phrase lap sit exillis', all of which are more or less plausible. "Lapsit exillis' might be a
corruption of "lapis ex caelis' - "stone from the heavens'. It might also be a corruption of
lap sit ex caelis' - "it fell from the heavens', or of "lapis lapsus ex caelus' - "a stone fallen
from heaven', or, finally, of "lapis elixir' the fabulous Philosopher's Stone of alchemy. 2
Certainly the passage quoted, like the whole of Wolfram's poem for that matter, is laden
with alchemical symbolism. The phoenix, for example is established alchemical shorthand
for resurrection or rebirth and also, in medieval iconography, is an emblem of the dying
and resurrected Jesus.
If the phoenix is indeed somehow representative of Jesus, Wolfram is
implicitly associating him with a stone. Such an association is, of
course, hardly unique. There is Peter (Pierre or "stone' in French)
the "stone' or 'rock' on which Jesus establishes his church. And as we
had discovered,
Jesus, in the New Testament, explicitly equates himself with "the keystone neglected by
the builders' the keystone of the Temple; the Rock of Sion.
Because it was "founded' on this rock, there was supposedly a royal tradition descended
from Godfroi de Bouillon which was equal to the reigning dynasties of Votrppe.
Wolfram links that immedately following the one quoted, and, through
the symlioraecifically with the Crucifixion -This very day, there comes
with the
Magdalene: wherein lies its greatest power the Grail] a message and
they await there a dove, jay is Good Friday,
Heaven. It brings a small white the stone. Then, shining white, the
306
~# , down it on Heaven again. Always on Good Friday it ~&r? up to
the stone what I have just told you, and from that the stone derives
whatever good fragrances of drink and food there are on earth, like to
the perfection of Paradise. I mean all things the earth may bear. And
further the stone provides whatever game lives beneath the heavens,
whether it flies or runs or swims. Thus, to the knightly brotherhood,
does the power of the Grail give sustenance. z'
In addition to its other extraordinary attributes the Grail, in Wolfram's poem, would almost
seem to possess a certain sentience. It has the capacity to call individuals into its service
to call them, that is, in an active sense:
Hear now how those called to the Grail are made known. On the stone, around the edge,
appear letters inscribed, giving the name and lineage of each one, maid or boy, who is to
take this blessed journey. No one needs to rub out the inscription, for once he had read
the name, it fades away before his eyes. All those now grown to maturity came there as
children. Blessed is the mother who bore a child destined to do service there. Poor and
rich alike rejoice if their child is summoned to join the company. They are brought there
from many lands. From sinful shame they are more protected than others, and receive
good reward in heaven. When life dies for them here they are given perfection there."
If the Grail's guardians are Templars, its actual custodians would
appear to be members of a specific family. This family seems to
possess numerous collateral branches, some of which their identity
often unknown even to themselves are scattered about the world. But
other members of the family inhabit the Grail of
Munsalvaesche fairly obviously linked with the legendary Cathar castle
of The writer has identified tsalvat, which at least one salvaesche
dwell a nu, as ontsegur. Within Munthe Grail's actual ?~-tuber of
enigmatic figures. There is ("Reponse de C'-,eeper and bearer, Repanse
de Schoye course, A ~." =loix or "Chosen Response'). And there is, of
castle .ntortas, the Fisher King and lord of the Grail cro ;, who is
wounded in the genitals and unable to pro. ate or, alternatively, to
307
die. As in Chretien's Grail 312 romance, Anfortas, for Wolfram, is
Parzival's uncle. And when, at the end of the poem, the curse is lifted and Anfortas can at
last die, Parzival becomes heir to the Grail castle.
The Grail, or the Grail family, calls certain individuals into its service from the outside
world individuals who must be initiated into some sort of mystery. At the same time it
sends its trained servitors out into the world to perform actions on its behalf and
sometimes to occupy a throne.
For the Grail, apparently, possesses the power to create kings:
Maidens are appointed to care for the Grail .. . That was God's decree, and these maidens
performed their service before it. The Grail selects only noble company. Knights, devout
and good, are chosen to guard it. The coming of the high stars brings this people great
sorrow, young and old alike.
God's anger at them has lasted all too long. When shall they ever say yes to joy? .. . I will
tell you something more, whose truth you may well believe. A twofold chance is often
theirs; they both give and receive profit. They receive young children there, of noble
lineage and beautiful.
And if anywhere a land loses its lord, if the people there acknowledge
the
Hand of God, and seek a new lord, they are granted one from the company
of the Grail. They must treat him with courtesy, for the blessing of
God protects him.z'
From the above passage, it would seem that at some point in the past
the
Grail family somehow incurred God's wrath. The allusion to "God's
anger at them' echoes numerous medieval statements about the Jews. It
also echoes-the title of a mysterious book associated with Nicolas
Flamel The
Sacred Book of Abraham the Jew, Prince, Priest, Levite, Astrologer
and
Philosopher to that Tribe of Jews who by the Wrath of God were Dispersed amongst the
Gauls. And Flegetanis, who Wolfram says wrote the original account of the Grail, is said
to be descended from Solomon. Could the Grail family possibly be of Judaic origin?
Whatever the curse formerly visited upon the Grail family, it has unquestionably come, by
Parzival's time, to enjoy divine favour and a great deal of power as well.
308
And yet it is rigorously enjoined, at least in certain respects to
secrecy about its identity.
The men [of the Grail family] God sends forth secretly; the maidens leave openly .. . Thus
the maids are sent out openly from the Grail, and the men in secret, that they may have
children who will in turn one day enter the service of the Grail, and serving, enhance its
company.
God can teach them how to do this .25
Women of the Grail family, then, when they intermarry with the outside world, may
disclose their pedigree and identity. The men, however, must keep this information
scrupulously concealed so much so, in fact, that they may not even allow questions about
their origins. The point, apparently, is a crucial one, for Wolfram returns to it most
emphatically at the very end of the poem.
Upon the Grail it was now found written that any templar whom God's
hand appointed master over foreign people should forbid the asking of
his name or race, and that he should help them to their rights. If the
question is asked of him they shall have his help no longer .26
From this, of course, derives the dilemma of Lohengrin, Parzival's son, who when queried
on his origin, must abandon his wife and children and retire into the seclusion from
whence he came. But why should such stringent secrecy be required? What "skeleton in
the closet', so to speak, might conceivably dictate it? If the Grail family were, in fact, of
Judaic origin, that for the age in which Wolfram was writing might constitute a possible
explanation. And such an explanation gains at least some credence from the Lohengrin
story. For there are many variants of the Lohengrin story, and Lohengrin is not always
identified by the same name. In some versions, he is called Helios implying the sun. In
other versions, he is called Elie or Eli 17 an unmistakably Judaic name.
In Robert de Boron's romance and in the Perlesvaus, Perceval is of
Judaic lineage the 'holy lineage' of Joseph of Arimathea. In Wolfram's
poem this status, so far as Parzival is concerned, would seem to be
incidental. True,
Parzival is the nephew of the wounded Fisher King and thus related by
309
blood to the Grail family. And though he does not marry into the
Grail family he is, in fact, already married he still inherits the Grail castle and becomes its
new lord. But for Wolfram the protagonist's pedigree would seem to be less important
than the means whereby he proves himself worthy of it. He must, in short, conform to
certain criteria dictated by the blood he carries in his veins. And this emphasis would
clearly seem to indicate the importance Wolfram ascribes to that blood.
There is no question that Wolfram does ascribe immense significance to a particular
bloodline. If there is a single dominant theme pervading not only Parzival, but his other
works as well, it is not so much the Grail as the Grail family. Indeed the Grail family
seems to dominate Wolfram's mind to an almost obsessive degree, and he devotes far
more attention to them and their genealogy than to the mysterious object of which they are
custodians.
The genealogy of the Grail family can be reconstructed from a close
reading of Parzival. Parzival himself is a nephew of Anfortas, the
maimed Fisher
King and lord of the Grail castle. Anfortas, in turn, is the son of
one
Frimutel, and Frimutel the son of Titurel. At this point the lineage
becomes more entangled. Eventually, however, it leads back to a
certain
Laziliez which may be a derivation of Lazarus, the brother, in the
New
Testament, of Mary and Martha. And Laziliez's parents, the original progenitors of the
Grail family, are named Mazadan and Terdelaschoye.
The latter is obviously a Germanic version of a French phrase, "Terre
de la
Choix' - "Chosen Land'. Mazadan is rather more obscure. It might
conceivably derive from the Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda, the dualist
principle of Light. At the same time, it also, if only phonetically
perhaps, suggests
Masada - a major bastion during the Judaic revolt against Roman occupation in A.D. 68.
The names Wolfram ascribes to members of the Grail family are thus
often provocative and suggestive. At the same time, however, they told
us nothing that was historically useful. If we hoped to find an actual
historical prototype for the Grail family, we would have to look
elsewhere. The clues were meagre enough. We knew, for example, that
the Grail family supposedly culminated in Godfroi de Bouillon; but that
did not cast much light on
Godfroi's mythical antecedents except, of course, that (like his real
310
antecedents) they kept their identity scrupulously secret. But
according to Wolfram, Kyot found an account of the
Grail story in the annals of the house of Anjou, and Parzival himself
is said to be of Angevin blood. At the least this was extremely
interesting for the house of Anjou was closely associated with both the
Templars and the
Holy Land. Indeed Fulques, Count of Anjou, himself became, so to
speak, an "honorary' or part time Templar. In 1131, moreover, he
married Godfroi de
Bouillon's niece, the legendary Melusine, and became king of Jerusalem.
According to the "Prieure documents', the lords of Anjou the
Plantagenet family were thus allied to the Merovingian bloodline. And
the name of
Plantagenet may even have been intended to echo "Plant-Ard' or Plantard.
Such connections were patchy and tenuous. But additional clues were
provided for us by the geographical setting of Wolfram's poem. For the
most part this setting is France. In contrast to later Grail
chroniclers Wolfram even maintains that Arthur's court, Camelot, is
situated in France quite specifically at Nantes. Nantes, now in
Brittany, was the westernmost boundary of the old Merovingian realm at
the apex of its power. 2e
In a manuscript of Chretien's version of the Grail story, Perceval
declares he was born in "Scaudone' or "Sinadon', or some such place
that appears in a number of orthographic variants and the region is
described as mountainous. According to Wolfram, Parzival comes from
"Waleis'. Most scholars have taken Waleis to be Wales and Sinadon, in
it various spellings, as Snowdon or Snowdonia. If this is so, however,
certain insurmountable problems arise, and, as one modern commentator
remarks, "maps fail us'. For characters move constantly between Waleis
and Arthur's court at Nantes, as well as other French locations,
without crossing any water! They move overland, in short, and through
regions whose inhabitants speak French. Was Wolfram's geography simply
sloppy? Can it possibly have been that careless? Or might Waleis not
be Wales after all? Two scholars have suggested that it might be
Valois, the region of France to the north-east of Paris but there are
no mountains in Valois, nor does the rest of the landscape conform in
any way to Wolfram's description. At the same time, however, there is
311
another possible location for Waleis - a location that is mountainous,
that does conform precisely to Wolfram's other topographical
descriptions and whose inhabitants do speak French. This location is
the Valais in Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Leman to the east of
Geneva. It would seem, in short, that Parzival's homeland is neither
Wales nor Valois, but Valais. And his actual birthplace of Sinadon would not be Snowdon
or Snowdonia, but Sidonensis, the capital of the Valais, And the modern name of
Sidonensis, capital of the Valais, is Sion.
According to Wolfram, then, Arthur's court is in Brittany. Parzival
would seem to have been born in Switzerland. And the Grail family
itself? The
Grail castle? Wolfram provides an answer in his most ambitious work,
left unfinished at his death and entitled Der Junge Titurel. In this
evocative fragment Wolfram addressed himself to the life of Titurel,
father of
Anfortas, and the original builder of the Grail castle. Der ]unge Titurel is very specific not
only about genealogical detail, but also about the dimensions, the components, the
materials, the configuration of the Grail castle its circular chapel, for example, like those of
the Templars. And the castle itself is situated in the Pyrenees.
In addition to Der Junge Titurel, Wolfram left another work unfinished
at his death the poem known as Willehalm, whose protagonist is Guillem
de
Gellone, Merovingian ruler of the ninth-century principality straddling
the
Pyrenees. Guillem is said to be associated with the Grail family. z9 He
would thus seem to be the only figure in Wolfram's works whose
historical identity can actually be determined. Yet even in his
treatment of the unidentifiable figures, Wolfram's meticulous precision
is astonishing. The more one studies him, the more likely it seems
that he is referring to an actual group of people not a mythic or
fictionalised family, but one that did exist historically, and may well
have included Guillem de Gellone. This conclusion becomes all the more
plausible when Wolfram admits he is hiding something that Parzival and
his other works are not merely romances, but also initiation documents,
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depositories of secrets. The Grail and Cabalism
As the Perlesvaus suggests, the Grail, at least in part, would seem to be an experience of
some kind. In his excursus on the Grail's curative properties and its power to ensure
longevity, Wolfram would also seem to be implying something experiential as well as
symbolic a state of mind or a state of being. There seems little question that on one level
the Grail is an initiatory experience which in modern terminology would be described as a
'transformation' or "altered state of consciousness'. Alternatively it might be described as
a "Gnostic experience', a 'mystical experience', 'illumination' or "union with God'. It is
possible to be even more precise and place the experiential aspect of the Grail in a very
specific context.
That context is the Cabala and Cabalistic thought. Certainly such
thought was much 'in the air' at the time the Grail romances were
composed. There was a famous Cabalistic school at Toledo, for
instance, where Kyot is said to have learned of the Grail. There were
other schools at Gerona,
Montpellier and elsewhere in the south of France. And it would hardly seem coincidental
that there was also such a school at Troyes. It dated from 1 070 - Godfroi de Bouillon's
time and was conducted by one Rashi, perhaps the most famous of medieval Cabalists.
It is impossible here, of course, to do justice to the Cabala or Cabalistic thought.
Nevertheless certain points must be made in order to establish the connection between
Cabalism and the Grail romances.
Very briefly then,
Cabalism might be described as "esoteric Judaism' - a practical
psychological methodology of uniquely Judaic origin designed to induce
a dramatic transformation of consciousness. In this respect it may be
viewed as a Judaic equivalent of similar methodologies or disciplines
in Hindu,
Buddhist and Taoist tradition certain forms of yoga for example, or
of
Zen.
Like its Eastern equivalents, Cabalistic training entails a series of
rituals a structured sequence of successive initiatory experiences
leading the practitioner to ever more radical modifications of
consciousness and cognition. And though the meaning and significance
of such modifications is subject to interpretation, their reality, as
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psychological phenomena, is beyond dispute. Of the "stages' of
Cabalistic initiation, one of the most important is the stage known as Tiferet. In the Tiferet
experience the individual is said to pass beyond the world of form into the formless or, in
contemporary terms, to 'transcend his ego'. Symbolically speaking this consists of a kind
of sacrificial "death' the "death' of the ego, of one's sense of individuality and the isolation
such individuality entails; and, of course, a rebirth, or resurrection, into another dimension,
of all-encompassing unity and harmony. In Christian adaptations of Cabalism Tiferet was
therefore associated with Jesus.
For medieval Cabalists the initiation into Tiferet was associated with certain specific
symbols. These included a hermit or guide or wise old man, a majestic king, a child, a
sacrificed god.3 In time other symbols were added as well a truncated pyramid, for
example, a cube and a rose cross.
The relation of these symbols to the Grail romances is sufficiently
apparent. In every Grail narrative there is a wise old hermit
Perceval's or Parzival's uncle frequently who acts as a spiritual
guide. In
Wolfram's poem the Grail as "stone' may possibly correspond to the cube.
And in the Perlesvaus the various manifestations of the Grail
correspond almost precisely to the symbols of Tiferet. Indeed, the
Perlesvaus in itself establishes a crucial link between the Tiferet
experience and the
Grail.3'
The Play on Words
We could thus identify the experiential aspect of the Grail and connect
it quite precisely with Cabalism. This imparted another seemingly
incongruous
Judaic element to the Grail's supposedly Christian character. But whatever the Grail's
experiential aspects, there were other aspects as well aspects which we could not ignore
and which were of paramount importance-to our story. These aspects were historical and
genealogical.
Again and again, the Grail romances had confronted us with a pattern of
a distinctly mundane and un mystical nature. Again and again, there
was a callow knight who, by dint of certain tests that proved him
'worthy', was initiated into some monumental secret. Again and again,
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this secret was closely guarded by an order of some sort, apparently
chivalric in composition. Again and again, the secret was in some way associated with a
specific family. Again and again, the protagonist by intermarriage with this family, by his
own lineage or by both became lord of the Grail and everything connected with it. On this
level, at least, we seemed to be dealing with something of a concrete historical character.
One can become lord of a castle or a group of people. One can become heir to certain
lands or even a certain heritage. But one cannot become lord or heir to an experience.
Was it relevant, we wondered, that the Grail romances, when subjected
to close scrutiny, rested sb crucially on matters of lineage and
genealogy, pedigree, heritage and inheritance? Was it relevant that
the lineage and genealogy in question should overlap at certain key
points those which had figured so saliently in our inquiry the house of
Anjou, for instance,
Guillem de Gellone and Godfroi de Bouillon? Could the mystery attached
to
Rennes-leChateau and the Prieure de Sion relate, in some as yet obscure way, to that
mysterious object called the Holy Grail? Had we, in fact, been following in Parzival's
footsteps and conducting our own modern Grail quest?
The evidence suggested that this was a very real possibility. And indeed there was one
more crucial piece of evidence which tilted the balance decisively in favour of such a
conclusion. In many of the earlier manuscripts, the Grail is called the "Sangraal'; and
even in the later version by Malory, it is called the "Sangreal'. It is likely that some such
form "Sangraal' or "Sangreal' was in fact the original one. It is also likely that that one
word was subsequently broken in the wrong place. In other words "Sangraal' or
"Sangreal' may not have been intended to divide into "San Graal' or "San Greal' but into
"Sang Raal' or "Sang Real'. Or, to employ the modern spelling, Sang Royal. Royal blood.
In itself, such wordplay might be provocative but hardly conclusive.
Taken in conjunction with the emphasis on genealogy and lineage,
however, there is not much room for doubt. And, for that matter, the
traditional associations the cup which caught Jesus's blood, for
instance would seem to reinforce this supposition. Quite clearly, the
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Grail would appear to pertain in some way to blood and a bloodline. This raises, of course,
certain obvious questions. Whose blood? And whose bloodline?
The Lost Kings and the Grail
The Grail romances were not the only poems of their kind to find a receptive audience in
the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.
There were many others Tristan and Isolde, for instance, and Eric and
Enide composed in some cases by Chretien himself, in some cases by
contemporaries and countrymen of Wolfram, such as Hartmann von Aue and
Gottfried von
Strassburg. These romances make no mention whatever of the Grail. But they are clearly
set in the same mythico-historical period as the Grail romances, because they depend
more or less heavily on Arthur. As far as he can be dated, Arthur seems to have lived in
the late fifth and/or early sixth centuries. In other words, Arthur lived at the peak of
Merovingian ascendancy in Gaul, and was, in fact, closely contemporary with Clovis. If
the term "Ursus' - bear' was applied to the Merovingian royal line, the name "Arthur', which
also means 'bear' may have been an attempt to confer a comparable dignity on a British
chieftain.
For the writers at the time of the Crusades, the Merovingian era seems
to have been of some crucial importance so much so, in fact, that it
provided the backdrop for romances which had nothing to do with
either
Arthur or the Grail. One such is the national epic of Germany, the
Nibelungenlied or Song of the Nibelungen, on which, in the nineteenth
century, Wagner drew so heavily for his monumental operatic sequence,
The
Ring. This musical opus, and the poem from which it derives, are generally dismissed as
pure fantasy. Yet the Nibelungs were a real people, a Germanic tribe who lived in late
Merovingian times.
Moreover, many of the names in the Nibelungenlied Siegmund, for
instance, Siegfried, Sieglinde,
Brunhilde and Kriemhild are patently Merovingian names. Many episodes in the poem
closely parallel, and may even refer to, specific events of Merovingian times.
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Although it has nothing to do with either Arthur or the Grail, the
Nibelungenlied is further evidence that the Merovingian epoch exercised
a powerful hold on the imaginations of twelfth- and thirteenth-century
poets as if they knew something crucial about that epoch which later
writers and historians did not. In any case, modern scholars concur
that the Grail romances, like the Nibelungenlied, refer to the
Merovingian age. In part, of course, this conclusion would appear
self-evident, given the prominence of Arthur. But it also rests on
specific indications provided by the Grail romances themselves. The
(Zueste del Saint
Graal, for example, composed between 1215 and 1230, declares explicitly
that the events of the Grail story occurred precisely 454 years after
the resurrection of Jesus. 3z Assuming Jesus died in A.D. 33, the Grail
saga would thus have enacted itself in A.D. 487 during the first flush
of
Merovingian power, and a mere nine years before the baptism of Clovis.
There was nothing revolutionary or controversial, therefore, in
connecting the Grail romances with the Merovingian age. None the less
question of emphasis which, because of Arthur, has been placed
primarily on Britain. As a result of this distinctly British emphasis,
we had not automatically associated the Grail with the Merovingian
dynasty. And yet Wolfram insists that
Arthur's court is at Nantes and that his poem is set in France. The
same assertion is made by other Grail romances the Queste del Saint
Graal, for instance. And there are medieval traditions which maintain
the Grail was not brought to Britain by Joseph of Arimathea, but to
France by the
Magdalene.
We now began to wonder whether the pre-eminence assigned to Britain by
commentators on the Grail romances had not perhaps been misplaced, 33
and whether the romances in fact referred primarily to events on the
continent more particularly to events in France. And we began to
suspect that the
Grail itself, the "blood royal', actually referred to the blood royal of the Merovingian
dynasty a blood which was deemed to be sacred and invested with-magical or miraculous
properties.
Perhaps the Grail romances constituted, at least in part, a symbolic or
allegorical account of certain events of the Merovingian epoch. And
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perhaps we had already encountered some of those events in the course
of our investigation. A marriage with some special family, for
example, which, shrouded by time, engendered the legends attending the
dual paternity of Merovee. Or perhaps, in the
Grail family, a representation of the clandestine perpetuation of the
Merovingian bloodline les rois perdus or "lost kings' in the mountains and caves of the
Razes. Or perhaps that bloodline's exile in England during the late ninth and early tenth
centuries. And the secret but august dynastic alliances whereby the Merovingian vine,
like that of the Grail family, eventually bore fruit in Godfroi de Bouillon and the house of
Lorraine.
Perhaps Arthur himself the "bear' was only incidentally related to
the
Celtic or Gallo-Roman chieftain. Perhaps the Arthur in the Grail romances was really
"Ursus' another name for "bear'. Perhaps the legendary Arthur in the chronicles of
Geoffrey of Monmouth had been appropriated by writers on the Grail and deliberately
transformed into the vehicle for a quite different, and secret, tradition. If so, this would
explain why the Templars -established by the Prieure de Sion as guardians of the
Merovingian bloodline were declared to be guardians of the Grail and the Grail family.
If the Grail family and the Merovingian bloodline were one and the
same, the
Templars would indeed have been the guardians of the Grail at the time,
more or less, that the Grail romances were composed. Their presence in
the
Grail romances would not, therefore, have been anachronistic.
The hypothesis was intriguing, but it raised one extremely crucial
question. The romances may have been set in Merovingian times, but
they linked the Grail quite explicitly to the origins of Christianity
to
Jesus, to Joseph of Arimathea, to the Magdalene. Some of them, in
fact, go even further. In Robert de Boron's poem, Galahad is said to
be Joseph of
Arimathea's son although the identity of the knight's mother is unclear.
And the (Zueste del Saint Graal calls Galahad, like Jesus, a scion of
the house of David, and identifies Galahad with Jesus himself. Indeed,
the very name Galahad, according to modern scholars, derives from the
name Gilead, which was deemed a mystical designation for Jesus .34
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If the Grail could be, identified with the Merovingian bloodline, what
was its connection with Jesus? Why should something so intimately associated with
Jesus also be associated with the Merovingian epoch?"
How were we to reconcile the chronological discrepancy the relation
between something so pertinent to Jesus and events that occurred at
least four centuries later? How could the Grail refer, on the one
hand, to the Merovingian age and, on the other, to something brought by
Joseph of
Arimathea to England or the Magdalene to France?
Even on a symbolic level such questions asserted themselves. The
Grail, for example, pertained in some way to blood. Even without the
breaking of
"Sangraal' into "Sang raal', the Grail was said to have been a
receptacle for Jesus's blood. How could this be related to the
Merovingians? And why should it be related to them at precisely the
time it was during the
Crusades, when Merovingian heads wore the crown of the kingdom of
Jerusalem, protected by the Order of the Temple and the Prieure de Sion?
The Grail romances stress the importance of Jesus's blood. They also
stress a lineage of some kind. And, given such factors as the Grail
family's culmination in Godfroi de Bouillon, they would seem to pertain
to
Merovingian blood.
Could there possibly be some connection between these two apparently
discordant elements? Could the blood of Jesus in some way be related
to the blood royal of the Merovingians? Could the lineage connected
with the
Grail, brought into Western Europe shortly after the Crucifixion, be intertwined with the
lineage of the Merovingians?
The Need to Synthesise
At this point we paused to review the evidence at our disposal. It was leading us in a
startling yet unmistakable direction. But why, we wondered, had this evidence never been
subpoenaed by scholars before?
It had certainly been readily available, and for centuries. Why had no
one, to our knowledge, ever synthesised it and drawn what would seem to
be fairly obvious, if only speculative, conclusions? Granted, such
conclusions a few centuries ago would have been rigorously taboo and,
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if published, severely punished. But there had been no such danger
for at least the last two hundred years. Why, then, had the fragments of the puzzle not
hitherto been assembled into a coherent whole?
The answers to these questions, we realised, lay in our own age and the
modes or habits of thought which characterise it. Since the
so-called
"Enlightenment' of the eighteenth century, the orientation of Western culture and
consciousness had been towards analysis, rather than synthesis.
As a result, our age is one of ever increasing specialisation. In accordance with this
tendency, modern scholarship lays inordinate emphasis on specialisation which, as the
modern university attests, implies and entails the segregation of knowledge into distinct
"disciplines'. In consequence, the diverse spheres covered by our inquiry have
traditionally been segmented into quite separate compartments. In each compartment the
relevant material has been duly explored and evaluated by specialists, or "experts' in the
field. But few, if any, of these "experts' have endeavoured to establish a connection
between their particular field and others that may overlap it. Indeed such "experts' tend
generally to regard fields other than their own with considerable suspicion spurious at
worst, at best irrelevant. And eclectic or "interdisciplinary' research is often actively
discouraged as being, among other things, too speculative.
There have been numerous treatises on the Grail romances, their origins
and development, their cultural impact, their literary quality. And
there have been numerous studies, valid and otherwise, of the Templars
and the
Crusades. But few experts on the Grail romances have been historians,
while fewer still have displayed much interest in the complex, often
sordid and not very romantic history behind the Templars and the
Crusades. Similarly historians of the Templars and the Crusades have,
like all historians, adhered closely to "factual' records and
documents. The Grail romances have been dismissed as mere fiction, as
nothing more than a "cultural phenomenon', a species of "by-product'
generated by the "imagination of the age'. To suggest to such an
historian that the Grail romances might contain a kernel of historical
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truth would be tantamount to heresy even though Schliemann, more than
True, various occult writers, proceeding primarily on the basis of
wishful thinking, have given literal credence to the legends, claiming
that, in some mystical way, the Templars were custodians of the Grail
whatever the
Grail might be. But there has been no serious historical study that
endeavours to establish any real connection. The Templars are regarded
as fact, the Grail as fiction, and no association between the two is
acknowledged possible. And if the Grail romances have thus been
neglected by scholars and historians of the period in which they were
written, it is hardly surprising that they have been neglected by
experts on earlier epochs. Quite simply, it would not occur to a
specialist in the Merovingian age to suspect that the Grail romances
might, in any way, shed light on the subject of his study, if, indeed,
he has any knowledge whatever of the
Grail romances. But is it not a serious omission that no Merovingian scholar we have
encountered even makes mention of the Arthurian legends which, chronologically
speaking, refer to the very epoch in which he claims expertise?
If historians are unprepared to make such connections, Biblical scholars are even less
prepared to do so. During the last few decades a welter of books has appeared -
according to which Jesus was a pacifist, an Essene, a mystic, a Buddhist, a sorcerer, a
revolutionary, a homosexual, even a mushroom. But despite this plethora of material on
Jesus and the historical context of the New Testament, not one author, to our knowledge,
has touched on the question of the Grail.
Why should he? Why should an expert on
Biblical history have any interest in, or knowledge of, a spate of fantastic romantic poems
composed in Western Europe more than a thousand years later? It would seem
inconceivable that the Grail romances could in any way elucidate the mysteries
surrounding the New Testament.
But reality, history and knowledge cannot be segmented and compartmentalised
according to the arbitrary filing system of the human intellect. And while documentary
evidence may be hard to come by, it is self-evident that traditions may survive for a
thousand years, then surface in a written form that does illuminate previous events.
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Certain Irish sagas, for instance, can reveal a great deal about the
shift from matriarchal to patriarchal society in Ancient Ireland. Without Homer's work,
composed long after the fact, no one would even have heard of the siege of Troy. And
War and Peace although written more than half a century later can tell us more than most
history books, more even than most official documents, about Russia during the
Napoleonic era.
Any responsible researcher must, like a detective, pursue whatever clues come to hand,
however seemingly improbable. One should not dismiss material a priori, out of hand,
because it threatens to lead into unlikely or unfamiliar territory. The events of the
Watergate scandal, for instance, were reconstructed initially from a multitude of ostensibly
disparate fragments, each meaningless in itself, and with no apparent connection between
them. Indeed, some of the often childish "dirty tricks' must have seemed, to investigators
at the time, as divorced from the broader issues as the Grail romances might seem from
the New Testament. And the Watergate scandal was confined to a single country and a
time-span of a few short years. The subject of our investigation encompasses the whole
of Western culture, and a time-span of two millennia.
What is necessary is an interdisciplinary approach to one's chosen material - a mobile and
flexible approach that permits one to move freely between disparate disciplines, across
space and time. One must be able to link data and make connections between people,
events and phenomena widely divorced from each other. One must be able to move, as
necessity dictates, from the third to the twelfth to the seventh to the eighteenth centuries,
drawing on a varied spectrum of sources early ecclesiastical texts, the Grail romances,
Merovingian records and chronicles, the writings of Freemasonry.
In short, one must synthesise for only by such synthesis can one discern the underlying
continuity, the unified and coherent fabric, which lies at the core of any historical problem.
Such an approach is neither particularly revolutionary, in principle, nor particularly
controversial.
It is rather like taking a tenet of contemporary Church dogma the
Immaculate Conception, for instance, or the obligatory celibacy of
priests and using it to illumine early Christianity. In much the same
way the
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Grail romances may be used to shed some significant light on the New
Testament on the career and identity of Jesus.
Finally it is not sufficient to confine oneself exclusively to facts. One must also discern the
repercussions and ramifications of facts, as those repercussions and ramifications radiate
through the centuries often in the form of myth and legend. True, the facts themselves
may be distorted in the process, like an echo reverberating among cliffs. But if the voice
itself cannot be located, the echo, however distorted, may yet point the way to it. Facts, in
short, are like pebbles dropped into the pool of history. They disappear quickly, often
without a trace. But they generate ripples which, if one's perspective is broad enough,
enable one to pinpoint where the pebble originally fell. Guided by the ripples, one may
then dive or dredge or adopt whatever approach one wishes. The point is that the ripples
permit one to locate what might otherwise be irrecoverable.
It was now becoming apparent to us that everything we had studied during our
investigation was but a ripple -which, monitored correctly, might direct us to a single stone
cast into the pool of history two thousand years ago.
Our Hypothesis
The Magdalene had figured prominently throughout our inquiry.
According to certain medieval legends, the Magdalene brought the Holy
Grail or "Blood
Royal' into France. The Grail is closely associated with Jesus. And
the
Grail, on one level at least, relates in some way to blood -or, more specifically, to a
bloodline and lineage. The Grail romances are for the most part, however, set in
Merovingian times. But they were not composed until after Godfroi de Bouillon fictional
scion of the Grail family and actual scion of the Merovingians was installed, in everything
but name, as king of Jerusalem.
If we had been dealing with anyone other than Jesus if we had been
dealing with a personage such as Alexander, for example, or Julius
Caesar these fragmentary shreds of evidence alone would have led,
almost ineluctably, to one glaring self-evident conclusion. We drew
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that conclusion, however controversial and explosive it might be. We
began to test it at least as a tentative hypothesis. Perhaps the
Magdalene that elusive woman in the Gospels was in fact Jesus's wife.
Perhaps their union produced offspring. After the Crucifixion, perhaps
the
Magdalene, with at least one child, was smuggled to Gaul where
established
Jewish communities already existed and where, in consequence, she might have found a
refuge. Perhaps there was, in short, an hereditary bloodline descended directly from
Jesus. Perhaps this bloodline, this supreme sang real; then perpetuated itself, intact and
incognito, for some four hundred years which is not, after all, a very long time for an
important lineage.
Perhaps there were dynastic intermarriages not only with other Jewish families, but with
Romans and Visigoths as well. And perhaps in the fifth century Jesus's lineage became
allied with the royal line of the Franks, thereby engendering the Merovingian dynasty.
If this sketchy hypothesis was in any sense true, it would serve to explain a great many
elements in our investigation. It would' explain the extraordinary status accorded the
Magdalene, and the cult significance she attained during the Crusades. It would explain
the sacred status accorded the Merovingians. It would explain the legendary birth of
Merovee child of two fathers, one of them a symbolic marine creature from beyond the
sea, a marine creature which, like Jesus, might be equated with the mystical fish. It would
explain the pact between the Roman Church and Clovis's bloodline for would not a pact
with Jesus's lineal descendants be the obvious pact for a church founded in his name? It
would explain the apparently incommensurate stress laid on the assassination of
Dagobert II for the Church, by being party to that murder, would have been guilty not only
of regicide, but, according to its own tenets, of a form of deicide as well. It would explain
the attempt to eradicate Dagobert from history.
It would explain the Carolingians' obsession to legitimi se themselves,
as Holy
Roman Emperors, by claiming a Merovingian pedigree.
A bloodline descended from Jesus through Dagobert would also explain
the
Grail family in the romances the secrecy which surrounds it, its
exalted status, the impotent Fisher King unable to rule, the process
whereby
Parzival or Perceval became heir to the Grail castle.
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Finally, it would explain the mystical pedigree of Godfroi de Bouillon
son or grandson of Lohengrin, grandson or great-grandson of Parzival, scion of the Grail
family. And if Godfroi were descended from Jesus, his triumphant capture of Jerusalem in
1099 would have entailed far more than simply rescuing the Holy Sepulchre from the
infidel. Godfroi would have been reclaiming his own rightful heritage.
We had already guessed that the references to viticulture throughout our investigation
symbolised dynastic alliances. On the basis of our hypothesis, viticulture now seemed to
symbolise the process whereby Jesus who identifies himself repeatedly with the vine
perpetuated his lineage. As if in confirmation, we discovered a carved door depicting
Jesus as a cluster of grapes. This door was in Sion, Switzerland.
Our hypothetical scenario was both logically consistent and intriguing. As yet, however, it
was also preposterous. Attractive though it might be, it was, as yet, much too sketchy and
rested on far too flimsy a foundation.
Although it explained many things, it could not yet in itself be supported.
There were still too many holes in it, too many inconsistencies and
anomalies, too many loose ends. Before we could seriously entertain or
consider it, we would have to determine whether there was any real
evidence to sustain it. In an attempt to find such evidence we began
to explore the
Gospels, the historical context of the New Testament and the writings
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of the early Church fathers. 12 The Priest-King Who Never Ruled
Most people today speak of "Christianity' as if it were a single
specific thing a coherent, homogeneous and unified entity. Needless to
say
"Christianity' is nothing of the sort. As everyone knows, there are
numerous forms of "Christianity': Roman Catholicism, for example, or
the Church of
England initiated by Henry VIII. There are the various other denominations of
Protestantism from the original Lutheranism and Calvinism of the sixteenth century to
such relatively recent developments as Unitarianism.
There are multitudinous 'fringe' or "evangelical' congregations, such
as the
Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses. And there are assorted
contemporary sects and. cults, like the Children of God and the
Unification
Church of the Reverend Moon. If one surveys this bewildering spectrum
of beliefs from the rigidly dogmatic and conservative to the radical
and ecstatic it is difficult to determine what exactly constitutes
"Christianity'.
If there is a single factor that does permit one to speak of
Christianity', a single factor that does link the otherwise diverse and
divergent
"Christian' creeds, it is the New Testament, and more particularly the
unique status ascribed by the New Testament to Jesus, his Crucifixion
and
Resurrection. Even if one does not subscribe to the literal or historical truth of those
events, acceptance of their symbolic significance generally suffices for one to be
considered a Christian.
If there is any unity, then, in the diffuse phenomenon called
Christianity, it resides in the New Testament and, more specifically,
in the accounts of Jesus known as the Four Gospels. These accounts are
popularly regarded as the most authoritative on record: and for many
Christians they are assumed to be both coherent and unimpugnable. From
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childhood one is led to believe that the "story' of Jesus, as it is
preserved in the Four Gospels, is, if not Godinspired, at least definitive. The four
evangelists, supposed authors of the Gospels, are deemed to be unimpeachable
witnesses who reinforce and confirm each other's testimony. Of the people who today call
themselves Christians, relatively few are aware of the fact that the Four Gospels not only
contradict each other, but, at times, violently disagree.
So far as popular tradition is concerned, the origin and birth of Jesus are well enough
known. But in reality the Gospels, on which that tradition is based, are considerably more
vague on the matter. Only two of the Gospels -Matthew and Luke say anything at all
about Jesus's origins and birth; and they are flagrantly at odds with each other. According
to Matthew, for example, Jesus was an aristocrat, if not a rightful and legitimate king -
descended from David via Solomon.
According to Luke, on the other hand,
Jesus's family, though descended from the house of David, was of somewhat less exalted
stock; and it is on the basis of Mark's account that the legend of the 'poor carpenter' came
into being. The two genealogies, in short, are so strikingly discordant that they might well
be referring to two quite different individuals.
The discrepancies between the Gospels are not confined to the question
of
Jesus's ancestry and genealogy. According to Luke, Jesus, on his birth, was visited by
shepherds. According to Matthew, he was visited by kings.
According to Luke, Jesus's family lived in Nazareth. From here they are said to have
journeyed for a census which history suggests never in fact occurred to Bethlehem, where
Jesus was born in the poverty of a manger.
But according to Matthew, Jesus's family had been fairly well-to-do
residents of Bethlehem all along, and Jesus himself was born in a
house. In
Matthew's version Herod's persecution of the innocents prompts the
family to flee into Egypt, and only on their return do they make their
home in
Nazareth.
The information in each of these accounts is quite specific and
assuming the census did occur perfectly plausible. And yet the
information itself simply does not agree. This contradiction cannot be
rationalised. There is no possible means whereby the two conflicting
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narratives can both be correct, and there is no means whereby they can
be reconciled. Whether one cares to admit it or not, the fact must be recognised that one
or both of the Gospels is wrong. In the face of so glaring and inevitable a conclusion, the
Gospels cannot be regarded as unimpugnable. How can they be unimpugnable when
they impugn each other?
The more one studies the Gospels, the more the contradictions between
them become apparent. Indeed they do not even agree on the day of
the
Crucifixion. According to John's Gospel, the Crucifixion occurred on
the day before the Passover. According to the Gospels of Mark, Luke
and
Matthew, it occurred on the day after. Nor are the Gospels in accord
on the personality and character of Jesus. Each depicts a figure who.
is patently at odds with the figure depicted in the others a meek
lamblike saviour in
Luke, for example, a powerful and majestic sovereign in Matthew who
comes "not to bring peace but a sword'. And there is further
disagreement about
Jesus's last words on the cross. In Matthew and Mark these words are,
"My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" In Luke they are, "Father, into thy hands I
commend my spirit." And in John, they are simply, "It is finished."
Given these discrepancies, the Gospels can only be accepted as a highly
questionable authority, and certainly not as definitive. They do not
represent the perfect word of any God; or, if they do, God's words have
been very liberally censored, edited, revised, glossed and rewritten by
human hands. The Bible, it must be remembered and this applies to both
the Old and New Testaments is only a selection of works, and, in many
respects, a somewhat arbitrary one. In fact, it could well include far
more books and writings than it actually does. Nor is there any
question of the missing books having been "lost'. On the contrary they
were deliberately excluded. In A.D. 367 Bishop Athanasius of
Alexandria compiled a list of works to be included in the New
Testament. This list was ratified by the
Church Council of Hippo in 393 and again by the Council of Carthage four years later. At
these councils a selection was agreed upon.
Certain works were assembled to form the New Testament as we know it
today, and others were cavalierly ignored. How can such a process of
selection possibly be regarded as definitive? How could a conclave of
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clerics infallibly decide that certain books "belonged' in the Bible
while others did not? Especially when some of the excluded books have a perfectly valid
claim to historical veracity?
As it exists today, moreover, the Bible is not only a product of a more
or less arbitrary selective process. It has also been subjected to
some fairly drastic editing, censorship and revision. In 1958, for
example, Professor
Morton Smith of Columbia University discovered, in a monastery near
Jerusalem, a letter which contained a missing fragment of the Gospel
of
Mark. The missing fragment had not been lost. On the contrary, it had apparently been
deliberately suppressed at the instigation, if not the express behest, of Bishop Clement of
Alexandria, one of the most venerated of the early Church fathers.
Clement, it seems had received a letter from one Theodore, who
complained of a Gnostic sect, the Carpocratians. The Carpocratians
appear to have been interpreting certain passages of the Gospel of Mark
in accordance with their own principles principles that did not concur
with the position of
Clement and Theodore. In consequence, Theodore apparently attacked
them and reported his action to Clement. In the letter found by
Professor Smith,
Clement replies to his disciple as follows:
You did well in silencing the unspeakable teachings of the Carpocratians.
For these are the "wandering stars' referred to in the prophecy, who wander from the
narrow road of the commandments into a boundless abyss of the carnal and bodily sins.
For, priding themselves in knowledge, as they say, "of the deep [things] of Satan', they do
not know that they are casting themselves away into "the nether world of the darkness' of
falsity, and, boasting that they are free, they have become slaves of servile desires.
Such [men} are to be opposed in all ways and altogether. For, even if
they should say something true, one who loves the truth should not,
even so, agree with them. For not all true [things] are the truth, nor
should that truth which [merely] seems true according to human opinions
329
be preferred to the true truth, that according to the faitlri It is an
extraordinary statement for a Church father. In effect Clement is saying nothing less than,
"If your opponent happens to tell the truth, you must deny it and lie in order to refute him."
But that is not all. In the following passage, Clement's letter goes on to discuss Mark's
Gospel and its "misuse', in his eyes, by the Carpocratians:
lAs for] Mark, then, during Peter's stay in Rome he wrote Ian account of] the Lord's
doings; not, however, declaring all [of them], nor yet hinting at the secret [ones], but
selecting those he thought most useful for increasing the faith of those who were being
instructed. But when Peter died as a martyr, Mark came over to Alexandria, bringing both
his own notes and those of Peter, from which he transferred to his former book the things
suitable to whatever makes for progress towards knowledge [gnosis]. [Thus] he
composed a more spiritual Gospel for the use of those who were being perfected.
Nevertheless, he yet did not divulge the things not to be uttered, nor did he write down the
hierophantic teaching of the Lord, but to the stories already written he added yet others
and, moreover, brought in certain sayings of which he knew the interpretation would, as a
mystagogue, lead the hearers into the innermost sanctuary of that truth hidden by seven
[veils]. Thus, in sum, he prearranged matters, neither grudgingly nor incautiously, in my
opinion, and, dying, he left his composition to the church in Alexandria, where it even yet
is most carefully guarded, being read only to those who are being initiated into the great
mysteries.
But since the foul demons are always devising destruction for the race
of men, Carpocrates, instructed by them and using deceitful arts, so
enslaved a certain presbyter of the church in Alexandria that he got
from him a copy of the secret Gospel, which he both interpreted
according to his blasphemous and carnal doctrine and, moreover,
polluted, mixing with the spotless and holy words utterly shameless
lies. 2
Clement thus freely acknowledges that there is an authentic secret
Gospel of
Mark. He then instructs Theodore to deny it:
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To them [the Carpocratians], therefore, as I said above, one must
never give way, nor, when they put forward their falsifications, should one concede that
the secret Gospel is by Mark, but should even deny it on oath.
For "not all true [things] are to be said to all men'. 3
What was this "secret Gospel' that Clement ordered his disciple to repudiate and that the
Carpocratians were 'misinterpreting'? Clement answers the question by including a word-
for-word transcription of the text in his letter:
To you, therefore, I shall not hesitate to answer the [questions] you have asked, refuting
the falsifications by the very words of the Gospel. For example after "And they were in the
road going up to Jerusalem," and what follows, until "After three days he shall arise', [the
secret Gospel] brings the following [material] word for word:
"And they come into Bethany, and a certain woman, whose brother had
died, was there. And, coming, she prostrated herself before Jesus and
says to him, "Son of David, have mercy on me". But the disciples
rebuked her. And
Jesus, being angered, went off with her into the garden where the tomb
was, and straightway a great cry was heard from the tomb. And going
near,
Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb. And
straightway, going in where the youth was, he stretched forth his hand
and raised him, seizing his hand. But the youth, looking upon him,
loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him. And
going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was
rich. And after six days, Jesus told him what to do and in the
eveining the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over [his] naked
[body]. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the
mystery of the kingdom of God. And thence arising, he returned to the
other side of the Jordan. 1 4
This episode appears in no existing version of the Gospel of Mark. In
its general outlines, however, it is familiar enough. It is, of
course, the raising of Lazarus, described in the Fourth Gospel,
ascribed to John. In the version quoted, however, there are some
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significant variations. In the first place there is a "great cry'
from the tomb before
Jesus rolls the rock aside or instructs the occupant to come forth. This strongly suggests
that the occupant was not dead and thereby, at a single stroke, contravenes any element
of the miraculous. In the second place there would clearly seem to be something more
involved than accepted accounts of the Lazarus episode lead one to believe. Certainly
the passage quoted attests to some special relation between the man in the tomb and the
man who "resurrects' him. A modern reader might perhaps be tempted to see a hint of
homosexuality. It is possible that the Carpocratians - a sect who aspired to
transcendence of the senses by means of satiation of the senses discerned precisely such
a hint. But, as Professor Smith argues, it is in fact much more likely that the whole
episode refers to a typical mystery school initiation a ritualised and symbolic death and
rebirth of the sort so prevalent in the Middle East at the time.
In any case the point is that the episode, and the passage quoted above, do not appear in
any modern or accepted version of Mark.
Indeed, the only references to Lazarus or a Lazarus figure in the New
Testament are in the
Gospel ascribed to John. It is thus clear that Clement's advice was accepted not only by
Theodore, but by subsequent authorities as well.
Quite simply the entire Lazarus incident was completely excised from
the
Gospel of Mark.
If Mark's Gospel was so drastically expurgated, it was also burdened
with spurious' additions. In its original version it ends with the
Crucifixion, the burial and the empty tomb. There is no Resurrection
scene, no reunion with the disciples. Granted, there are certain
modern Bibles which do contain a more conventional ending to the Gospel
of Mark an ending which does include the Resurrection. But virtually
all modern Biblical scholars concur that this expanded ending is a
later addition, dating from the late second century and appended to the
original document.5
The Gospel of Mark thus provides two instances of a sacred document supposedly
inspired by God which has been tampered with, edited, censored, revised by human
hands. Nor are these two cases speculative. On the contrary, they are now accepted by
scholars as demonstrable and proven.
332
Can one then suppose that Mark's Gospel was unique in being subjected
to alteration? Clearly if Mark's
Gospel was so readily doctored, it is reasonable to assume that the
other
Gospels were similarly treated.
For the purposes of our investigation, then, we could not accept the
Gospels as definitive and unimpugnable authority, but, at the same time
we could not discard them. They were certainly not wholly fabricated,
and they furnished some of the few clues available to what really
happened in the
Holy Land two thousand years ago. We therefore undertook to look more closely, to
winnow through them, to disengage fact from fable, to separate the truth they contained
from the spurious matrix in which that truth was often embedded. And in order to do this
effectively, we were first obliged to familia rise ourselves with the historical reality and
circumstances of the Holy Land at the advent of the Christian era. For the Gospels are
not autonomous entities, conjured out of the void and floating, eternal and universal, over
the centuries. They are historical documents, like any other like the Dead Sea Scrolls, the
epics of Homer and Virgil, the Grail romances. They are products of a very specific place,
a very specific time, a very specific people and very specific historical factors.
Palestine at the Time of Jesus
Palestine in the first century was a very troubled corner of the globe.
For some time the Holy Land had been fraught with dynastic squabbles,
internecine strife and, on occasion, full-scale war. During the second
century B.C. a more or less unified Judaic kingdom was transiently
established as chronicled by the two Apocryphal Books of Maccabees. By
63
B.C." however, the land was in upheaval again, and ripe for conquest.
More than half a century before Jesus's birth, Palestine fell to the
armies of Pompey, and Roman rule was imposed. But Rome at the time was
over-extended, and too preoccupied with her own affairs, to install the
administrative apparatus necessary for direct rule. She therefore
created a line of puppet kings to rule under her aegis. This line was
that of the
333
Herodians who were not Jewish, but Arab. The first of the line was
Antipater, who assumed the throne of Palestine in 63 B.C. On his death in 37 B.C." he
was succeeded by his son, Herod the Great, who ruled until 4 B.C. One must visualise,
then, a situation analogous to that of France under the Vichy government between 1940
and 1944. One must visualise a conquered land and a conquered people, ruled by a
puppet regime which was kept in power by military force. The people of the country were
allowed to retain their own religion and customs.
334
But the final authority was Rome. This authority was implemented according to Roman
335
336
In A.D. 6 the situation became more critical. In this year the country was split
administratively into two provinces, Judaea and Galilee.
Herod
Antipas became king of the latter. But Judaea the spiritual and
secular capital -was rendered subject to direct Roman rule,
administered by a Roman
Procurator based at Caesarea. The Roman regime was brutal and autocratic.
When it assumed direct control of Judaea more than three thousand rebels were
summarily crucified. The Temple was plundered and defiled.
Heavy taxation was imposed. Torture was frequently employed, and many
of the populace committed suicide. This state of affairs was not
improved by
Pontius Pilate, who presided as procurator of Judaea from A.D. 26 to
36. In contrast to the Biblical portraits of him, existing records
indicate that
Pilate was a cruel and corrupt man, who not only perpetuated, but intensified, the abuses
of his predecessor. It is thus all the more surprising at least on first glance that there
should be no criticism of Rome in the Gospels, no mention even of the burden of the
Roman yoke.
Indeed the Gospel accounts suggest that the inhabitants of Judaea were placid and
contented with their lot.
In point of fact very few were contented, and many were far from placid.
The Jews in the Holy Land at the time could be loosely divided into
several sects and sub sects There were, for example, the Sadducees a
small but wealthy land-owning class who, to the anger of their
compatriots, collaborated, Quisling-fashion, with the Romans. There
were the Pharisees - a progressive group who introduced much reform
into Judaism and who, despite the portrait of them in the Gospels,
placed
337
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338
themselves in staunch, albeit largely passive, opposition to Rome.
There were the Essenes an austere, mystically oriented sect, whose
teachings were much more prevalent and influential than is generally
acknowledged or supposed. Among the smaller sects and sub-sects there
were many whose precise character has long been lost to history, and
which, therefore, are difficult to define. It is worth citing the
Nazorites, however, of whom
Samson, centuries before, had been a member, and who were still in
existence during Jesus's time. And it is worth citing the Nazoreans or
Nazarenes a term which seems to have been applied to Jesus and his
followers. Indeed the original Greek version of the New Testament
refers to Jesus as "Jesus the
Nazarene' which is mistranslated in English as " esus of Nazareth'.
"Nazarene', in short, is a specifically sectarian word and has no connection with Nazareth.
There were numerous other groups and sects as well, one of which proved
of particular relevance to our inquiry. In A.D. 6, when Rome assumed
direct control of Judaea, a Pharisee rabbi known as Judas of Galilee
had created a highly militant revolutionary group composed, it would
appear, of both
Pharisees and Essenes. This following became known as Zealots. The
Zealots were not, strictly speaking, a sect. They were a movement,
whose membership was drawn from a number of sects. By the time of
Jesus's mission, the
Zealots had assumed an increasingly prominent role in the Holy Land's
affairs. Their activities formed perhaps the most important political
backdrop against which Jesus's drama enacted itself. Long after the
Crucifixion, Zealot activity continued unabated. By A.D. 44 this activity had so intensified
that some sort of armed struggle already seemed inevitable. In A.D. 66 the struggle
erupted, the whole of Judaea rising in organised revolt against Rome. It was a desperate,
tenacious but ultimately futile conflict reminiscent in certain respects of, say, Hungary in
1956.
At Caesarea alone 20,000 Jews were massacred by the Romans. Within
four years Roman legions had occupied Jerusalem, razed the city, and
sacked and plundered the Temple. Nevertheless the mountain fortress of
Masada held out for yet another three years, commanded by a lineal
descendant of Judas of
Galilee.
339
The aftermath of the revolt in Judaea witnessed a massive exodus of
Jews from the Holy Land. Nevertheless enough remained to foment
another rebellion some sixty years later in A.D. 132. At last, in 135,
the Emperor Hadrian decreed that all Jews be expelled by law from
Judaea, and Jerusalem became essentially a Roman city. It was renamed
Aelia
Capitolina.
Jesus's lifetime spanned roughly the first thirty-five years of a turmoil extending over 140
years. The turmoil did not cease with his death, but continued for another century. And it
engendered the psychological and cultural adjuncts inevitably attending any such
sustained defiance of an oppressor. One of these adjuncts was the hope and longing for
a Messiah who would deliver his people from the tyrant's yoke. It was only by virtue of
historical and semantic accident that this term came to be applied specifically and
exclusively to Jesus.
For Jesus's contemporaries, no Messiah would ever have been regarded as
divine. Indeed the very idea of a divine Messiah would have been
preposterous if not unthinkable. The Greek word for Messiah is
"Christ' or
"Christos'. The term whether in Hebrew or Greek -meant simply "the
anointed one' and generally referred to a king. Thus David, when he
was anointed king in the Old Testament, became, quite explicitly, a
"Messiah' or a "Christ'. And every subsequent Jewish king of the house
of David was known by the same appellation. Even during the Roman
occupation of Judaea, the Roman-appointed high priest was known as the
"Priest Messiah' or
"Priest Christ'."
For the Zealots, however, and for other opponents of Rome, this puppet priest was, of
necessity, a "false Messiah'. For them the "true Messiah' implied something very different
the legitimate roi perdu or "lost king', the unknown descendant of the house of David who
would deliver his people from Roman tyranny. During Jesus's lifetime anticipation of the
coming of such a Messiah attained a pitch verging on mass hysteria. And this anticipation
continued after Jesus's death.
Indeed the revolt of A.D. 66 was prompted in large part by Zealot
agitation and propaganda on behalf of a
Messiah whose advent was said to be imminent.
The term "Messiah', then, implied nothing in any way divine. Strictly
340
defined, it meant nothing more than an anointed king; and in the
popular mind it came to mean an anointed king who would also be a
liberator. In other words, it was a term with specifically political
connotations something quite different from the later Christian idea of
a "Son of God'. It was this mundane political term that was applied to
Jesus. He was called "Jesus the Messiah' or translated into Greek
"Jesus the Christ'. Only later was this designation contracted to
"Jesus
Christ' and a purely functional title distorted into a proper name.
The History of the Gospels
The Gospels issued from a recognisable and concrete historical reality. It was a reality of
oppression, of civic and social discontent, of political unrest, of incessant persecution and
intermittent rebellion. It was also a reality suffused with perpetual and tantalising
promises, hopes and dreams that a rightful king would appear, a spiritual and secular
leader who would deliver his people into freedom. So far as political freedom was
concerned, such aspirations were brutally extinguished by the devastating war between
A.D. 66 and 74. Transposed into a wholly religious form, however, the aspirations were
not only perpetuated by the Gospels, but given a powerful new impetus.
Modern scholars are unanimous in concurring that the Gospels do not date from Jesus ;s
lifetime. For the most part they date from the period between the two major revolts in
Judaea - 66 to 74 and 132 to 135 although they are almost certainly based on earlier
accounts. These earlier accounts may have included written documents since lost for
there was a wholesale destruction of records in the wake of the first rebellion. But there
would certainly have been oral traditions as well. Some of these were undoubtedly
grossly exaggerated and/or distorted, received and transmitted at second, third or fourth
hand. Others, however, may have derived from individuals who were alive in Jesus's
lifetime and may even have known him personally.
A young man at the time of the Crucifixion might well have been alive when the Gospels
were composed.
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The earliest of the Gospels is generally considered to be Mark's,
composed sometime during the revolt of 66-74 or shortly thereafter
except for its treatment of the Resurrection, which is a later and
spurious addition. Although not himself one of Jesus's original
disciples,
companion of
Saint Paul, and his Gospel bears an unmistakable stamp of Pauline thought.
But if Mark was a native of Jerusalem, his Gospel as Clement of
Alexandria states was composed in Rome, and addressed to a Greco Roman
audience. This, in itself, explains a great deal. At the time that
Mark's Gospel was composed, Judaea was, or had recently been, in open
revolt, and thousands of
Jews were being crucified for rebellion against the Roman regime. If
Mark wished his Gospel to survive and impress itself on a Roman
audience, he could not possibly present Jesus as anti-Roman. Indeed,
he could not feasibly present Jesus as politically oriented at all. In
order to ensure the survival of his message, he would have been obliged
to exonerate the
Romans of all guilt for Jesus's death to whitewash the existing and entrenched regime and
blame the death of the Messiah on certain Jews.
This device was adopted not only by the authors of the other Gospels,
but by the early Christian Church as well. Without such a device
neither Gospels nor
Church would have survived.
The Gospel of Luke is dated by scholars at around A.D. 80. Luke himself appears to have
been a Greek doctor, who composed his work for a high-ranking Roman official at
Caesarea, the Roman capital of Palestine.
For Luke, too, therefore, it would have been necessary to placate and
appease the Romans and transfer the blame elsewhere. By the time the
Gospel of Matthew was composed approximately A.D. 85 such a
transference seems to have been accepted as an established fact and
gone unquestioned. More than half of Matthew's Gospel, in fact, is
derived directly from Mark's, although it was composed originally in
Greek and reflects specifically
Greek characteristics. The author seems to have been a Jew, quite
possibly a refugee from Palestine. He is not to be confused with the
disciple named
Matthew, who would have lived much earlier and would probably have known only
Aramaic.
The Gospels of Mark, Luke and Matthew are known collectively as the
"Synoptic Gospels', implying that they see "eye to eye' or "with one
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eye' which of course, they do not. Nevertheless there is enough
overlap between them to suggest that they derived from a single common source -either
an oral tradition or some other document subsequently lost. This distinguishes them from
the Gospel of John, which betrays significantly different origins.
Nothing whatever is known about the author of the Fourth Gospel.
Indeed there is no reason to assume his name was John. Except for John
the
Baptist, the name John is mentioned at no point in the Gospel itself, and its attribution to a
man called John is generally accepted as later tradition. The Fourth Gospel is the latest of
those in the New Testament composed around A.D. 100 in the vicinity of the Greek city of
Ephesus. It displays a number of quite distinctive features. There is no nativity scene, for
example, no description whatever of Jesus's birth, and the opening is almost Gnostic in
character. The text is of a decidedly more mystical nature than the other Gospels, and the
content differs as well.
The other Gospels, for instance, concentrate primarily on Jesus's
activities in the northern province of Galilee and reflect what appears
to be only a second- or third-hand knowledge of events to the south, in
Judaea and Jerusalem including the Crucifixion. The Fourth Gospel, in
contrast, says relatively little about Galilee. It dwells exhaustively
on the events in Judaea and Jerusalem which concluded Jesus's career,
and its account of the Crucifixion may well rest ultimately on some
first-hand eye-witness testimony. It also contains a number of
episodes and incidents which do not figure in the other Gospels at all
the wedding at Cana, the roles of
Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, and the raising of Lazarus (although
the last was once included in Mark's Gospel). On the basis of such
factors modern scholars have suggested that the Gospel of John, despite
its late composition, may well be the most reliable and historically
accurate of the four. More than the other Gospels, it seems to draw
upon traditions current among contemporaries of Jesus, as well as other
material unavailable to
Mark, Luke and Matthew. One modern researcher points out that it
reflects an apparently first-hand topographical knowledge of Jerusalem
prior to the revolt of A.D. 66. The same author concludes, "Behind the
Fourth Gospel lies an ancient tradition independent of the other
Gospels." This is not an isolated opinion. In fact, it is the most
343
prevalent in modern Biblical scholarship. According to another
writer, "The Gospel of
John, though not adhering to the Markian chronological framework and
being much later in date, appears to know a tradition concerning Jesus
that must be primitive and authentic."e
On the basis of our own research we, too, concluded that the Fourth Gospel was the most
reliable of the books in the New Testament even though it, like the others, had been
subjected to doctoring, editing, expurgation and revision. In our inquiry we had occasion
to drew upon all four Gospels, and much collateral material as well. But it was in the
Fourth Gospel that we found the most persuasive evidence for our, as yet, tentative
hypothesis.
The Marital Status of Jesus
It was not our intention to discredit the Gospels. We sought only to winnow through them
to locate certain fragments of possible or probable truth and extract them from the matrix
of embroidery surrounding them. We were seeking fragments, moreover, of a very
precise character fragments that might attest to a marriage between Jesus and the
woman known as the Magdalene.
Such attestations, needless to say, would not be explicit. In order to find them, we
realised, we would be obliged to read between the lines, fill in certain gaps, account for
certain caesuras and ellipses. We would have to deal with omissions, with innuendoes,
with references that were, at best, oblique. And we would not only have to look for
evidence of a marriage. We would also have to look for evidence of circumstances that
might have been conducive to a marriage. Our inquiry would thus have to encompass a
number of distinct but closely related questions. We began with the most obvious of them.
1 ) Is there any evidence in the Gospels, direct or indirect, to suggest that Jesus was
indeed married?
There is, of course, no explicit statement to the effect that he was.
On the other hand, there is no explicit statement to the effect that he
was not and iris is both more curious and more significant than it
might first appear. As Dr. Geza Vermes of Oxford University points
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out, "There is complete silence in the Gospels concerning the marital
status of Jesus .. . Such a state of affairs is sufficiently unusual in
ancient Jewry to prompt further enquiry. "9
The Gospels state that many of the disciples Peter, for example were married. And at no
point does Jesus himself advocate celibacy. On the contrary, in the Gospel of Matthew he
declares, "Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male
and female .. . For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his
wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?" (19:4-5J Such a statement can hardly be
reconciled with an injunction to celibacy. And if Jesus did not preach celibacy, there is no
reason either to suppose that he practised it.
According to Judaic custom at the time it was not only usual, but almost mandatory, that a
man be married. Except among certain Essenes in certain communities, celibacy was
vigorously condemned. During the late first century, one Jewish writer even compared
deliberate celibacy with murder, and he does not seem to have been alone in this attitude.
And it was as obligatory for a Jewish father to find a wife for his son as it was to ensure
that his son be circumcised.
If Jesus were not married, this fact would have been glaringly conspicuous.
It would have drawn attention to itself, and been used to characterise
and identify him. It would have set him apart, in some significant
sense, from his contemporaries. If this were the case, surely one at
least of the
Gospel accounts would make some mention of so marked a deviation from custom? If
Jesus were indeed as celibate as later tradition claims, it is extraordinary that there is no
reference to any such celibacy. The absence of any such reference strongly suggests
that Jesus, as far as the question of celibacy was concerned, conformed to the
conventions of his time and culture -suggests, in short, that he was married. This alone
would satisfactorily explain the silence of the Gospels on the matter. The argument is
summarised by a respected contemporary theological scholar:
Granted the cultural background as witnessed .. . it is highly improbable that Jesus was
not married well before the beginning of his public ministry.
If he had insisted upon celibacy, it would have created a stir, a
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reaction which would have left some trace. So, the lack of mention
of
Jesus's marriage in the Gospels is a strong argument not against but for the hypothesis of
marriage, because any practice or advocacy of voluntary celibacy would in the Jewish
context of the time have been so unusual as to have attracted much attention and
comment."
The hypothesis of marriage becomes all the more tenable by virtue of the title of "Rabbi',
which is frequently applied to Jesus in the Gospels. It is possible, of course, that this term
is employed in its very broadest sense, meaning simply a self-appointed teacher. -But
Jesus's literacy his display of knowledge to the elders in the Temple, for example strongly
suggests that he was more than a self-appointed teacher. It suggests that he underwent
some species of formal rabbinical training and was officially recognised as a rabbi. This
would conform to tradition, which depicts Jesus as a rabbi in the strict sense of the word.
But if Jesus was a rabbi in the strict sense of the word, a marriage would not only have
been likely, but virtually certain. The Jewish Mishnaic Law is quite explicit on the subject:
"An unmarried man may not be a teacher.""
In the Fourth Gospel there is an episode related to a marriage which
may, in fact, have been Jesus's own. This episode is, of course, the
wedding at
Cana - a familiar enough story. But for all its familiarity, there are certain salient questions
attending it which warrant consideration.
From the account in the Fourth Gospel, the wedding at Cana would seem to be a modest
local ceremony a typical village wedding, whose bride and groom remain anonymous. To
this wedding Jesus is specifically "called' which is slightly curious perhaps, for he has not
yet really embarked on his ministry. More curious still, however, is the fact that his mother
"just happens', as it were, to be present. And her presence would seem to be taken for
granted. It is certainly not in any way explained.
What is more, it is Mary who not merely suggests to her son, but in
effect orders him, to replenish the wine. She behaves quite as if she
were the hostess: "And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus with
unto him,
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They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do
with thee? mine hour is not yet come." (John 2:3-4) But
Mary, thoroughly unperturbed, ignores her son's protest:
"His mother saith unto the servants, "Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it." (5) And the
servants promptly comply quite as if they were accustomed to receiving orders from both
Mary and Jesus.
Despite Jesus's ostensible attempt to disown her, Mary prevails; and
Jesus thereupon performs his first major miracle, the transmutation of
water into wine. So far as the Gospels are concerned, he has not
hitherto displayed his powers; and there is no reason for Mary to
assume he even possesses them. But even if there were, why should such
unique and holy gifts be employed for so banal a purpose? Why should
Mary make such a request of her son? More important still, why should
two "guests' at a wedding take on themselves the responsibility of
catering a responsibility that, by custom, should be reserved for the
host? Unless, of course, the wedding at
Cana is Jesus's own wedding. In that case, it would indeed be his responsibility to
replenish the wine.
There is further evidence that the wedding at Cana is in fact Jesus's own.
Immediately after the miracle has been performed, the "governor of the feast' - a kind of
majordomo or master of ceremonies tastes the newly produced wine, "the governor of the
feast called the bridegroom, And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth
good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept
the good wine until now." (John 2:9-10; our italics.) These words would clearly seem to be
addressed to Jesus. According to the Gospel, however, they are addressed to the
'bridegroom'. An obvious conclusion is that Jesus and the 'bridegroom' are one and the
same.
The Wife of Jesus
2) If Jesus was married, is there any indication in the Gospels of the
identity of his wife?
On first consideration there would appear to be two possible candidates
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two women, apart from his mother, who are mentioned repeatedly in the
Gospels as being of his entourage. The first of these is the Magdalene or, more precisely,
Mary from the village of Migdal, or Magdala, in Galilee. In all four Gospels this woman's
role is singularly ambiguous and seems to have been deliberately obscured. In the
accounts of Mark and Matthew she is not mentioned by name until quite late.
When she does appear it is in Judaea, at the time of the Crucifixion,
and she is numbered among Jesus's followers. In the Gospel of Luke,
however, she appears relatively early in Jesus 's ministry, while he is
still preaching in Galilee. It would thus seem that she accompanies
him from Galilee to
Judaea or, if not, that she at least moves between the two provinces as readily as he
does. This in itself strongly suggests that she was married to someone. In the Palestine
of Jesus's time it would have been unthinkable for an unmarried woman to travel
unaccompanied -and, even more so, to travel unaccompanied with a religious teacher and
his entourage. A number of traditions seem to have taken cognisance of this potentially
embarrassing fact.
Thus it is sometimes claimed that the Magdalene was married to one of
Jesus's disciples. If that were the case, however, her special relationship with Jesus and
her proximity to him would have rendered both of them subject to suspicions, if not
charges, of adultery.
Popular tradition notwithstanding, the Magdalene is not, at any point in any of the
Gospels, said to be a prostitute. When she is first mentioned in the Gospel of Luke, she is
described as a woman "out of whom went seven devils'. It is generally assumed that this
phrase refers to a species of exorcism on Jesus's part, implying the Magdalene was
"possessed'. But the phrase may equally refer to some sort of conversion and/or ritual
initiation. The cult of Ishtar or Astarte the Mother Goddess and "Queen of Heaven'
involved, for example, a seven-stage initiation. Prior to her affiliation with Jesus, the
Magdalene may well have been associated with such a cult. Migdal, or Magdala, was the
"Village of Doves', and there is some evidence that sacrificial doves were in fact bred
there. And the dove was the sacred symbol of Astarte.
One chapter before he speaks of the Magdalene, Luke alludes to a woman
who anointed Jesus. In the Gospel of Mark there is a similar
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anointment by an unnamed woman. Neither Luke nor Mark explicitly
identify this woman with the
Magdalene. But Luke reports that she was a "fallen woman', a "sinner'.
Subsequent commentators have assumed that the Magdalene, since she apparently had
seven devils cast out of her, must have been a sinner. On this basis the woman who
anoints Jesus and the Magdalene came to be regarded as the same person. In fact they
may well have been. If the Magdalene were associated with a pagan cult, that would
certainly have rendered her a "sinner' in the eyes not only of Luke, but of later writers as
well.
If the Magdalene was a "sinner', she was also, quite clearly, something more than the
"common prostitute' of popular tradition. Quite clearly she was a woman of means. Luke
reports, for example, that her friends included the wife of a high dignitary at Herod's court
and that both women, together with various others, supported Jesus and his disciples with
their financial resources. The woman who anointed Jesus was also a woman of means.
In Mark's Gospel great stress is laid upon the costliness of the spikenard ointment with
which the ritual was performed.
The whole episode of Jesus's anointing would seem to be an affair of
considerable consequence. Why else would it be emphasised by the
Gospels to the extent it is? Given its prominence, it appears to be
something more than an impulsive spontaneous gesture. It appears to be
a carefully premeditated rite. One must remember that anointing was
the traditional prerogative of kings and of the "rightful Messiah',
which means 'the anointed one'. From this, it follows that Jesus
becomes an authentic
Messiah by virtue of his anointing. And the woman who consecrates him in that august
role can hardly be unimportant.
In any case it is clear that the Magdalene, by the end of Jesus's
ministry, has become a figure of immense significance. In the three
Synoptic Gospels her name consistently heads the lists of women who
followed Jesus, just as
Simon Peter heads the lists of male disciples. And, of co use she was
the first witness to the empty tomb following the Crucifixion. Among
all his devotees, it was to the Magdalene that Jesus first chose to
reveal his
Resurrection.
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Throughout the Gospels Jesus treats the Magdalene in a unique and
preferential manner. Such treatment may well have induced jealousy in other disciples. It
would seem fairly obvious that later tradition endeavoured to blacken the Magdalene's
background, if not her name. The portrayal of her as a harlot may well have been the
overcompensation of a vindictive following, intent on impugning the reputation of a woman
whose association with Jesus was closer than their own and thus inspired an all too
human envy. If other "Christians', either during Jesus's lifetime or afterwards, grudged the
Magdalene her unique bond with their spiritual leader, there might well have been an
attempt to diminish her in the eyes of posterity. There is no question that she was so
diminished. Even today one thinks of her as a harlot, and during the Middle Ages houses
for reformed prostitutes were called Magdalenes. But the Gospels themselves bear
witness that the woman who imparted her name to these institutions did not deserve to be
so stigmatised.
Whatever the status of the Magdalene in the Gospels, she is not the
only possible candidate for Jesus's wife. There is one other, who
figures most prominently in the Fourth Gospel and who may be identified
as Mary of
Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus. She and her family are clearly on very familiar
terms with Jesus. They are also wealthy, maintaining a house in a fashionable suburb of
Jerusalem large enough to accommodate Jesus and his entire entourage. What is more,
the Lazarus episode reveals that this house contains a private tomb a somewhat
flamboyant luxury in Jesus's time, not only a sign of wealth but also a status symbol
attesting to aristocratic connections. In Biblical Jerusalem, as in any modern city, land
was at a premium; and only a very few could afford the self-indulgence of a private burial
site.
When, in the Fourth Gospel, Lazarus falls ill, Jesus has left Bethany for a few days and is
staying with his disciples on the Jordan.
Hearing of what has happened, he nevertheless delays for two days a
rather curious reaction and then returns to Bethany, where Lazarus lies
in the tomb. As he approaches, Martha rushes forth to meet him and
cries, "Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died." (John
1 1 :21 ) It is a perplexing assertion, for why should Jesus's physical
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presence necessarily have prevented the man's death? But the incident
is significant because Martha, when she greets Jesus, is alone. One
would expect Mary, her sister, to be with her. Mary, however, is
sitting in the house and does not emerge until Jesus explicitly
commands her to do so. The point becomes clearer in the "secret'
Gospel of Mark, discovered by Professor Morton Smith and cited earlier in this chapter. In
the suppressed account by Mark, it would appear that Mary does emerge from the house
before Jesus instructs her to do so. And she is promptly and angrily rebuked by the
disciples, whom Jesus is obliged to silence.
It would be plausible enough for Mary to be sitting in the house when
Jesus arrives in Bethany. In accordance with Jewish custom, she would
be "sitting
Shiveh' sitting in mourning. But why does she not join Martha and rush to meet Jesus on
his return? There is one obvious explanation. By the tenets of Judaic law at the time, a
woman "sitting Shiveh' would have been strictly forbidden to emerge from the house
except at the express bidding of her husband. In this incident the behaviour of Jesus and
Mary of Bethany conforms precisely to the traditional comportment of a Jewish man and
wife.
There is additional evidence for a possible marriage between Jesus and
Mary of Bethany. It occurs, more or less as a non sequitur, in the
Gospel of
Luke:
Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain
woman named Martha received him into her house.
And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word.
But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and
said,
Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that
she help me.
And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled
about many things:
But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken
away from her. (Luke 10:38-42)
From Martha's appeal, it would seem apparent that Jesus exercises some
sort of authority over Mary. More important still, however, is Jesus's
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reply. In any other context one would not hesitate to interpret this
reply as an allusion to a marriage. In any case it clearly suggests that Mary of Bethany
was as avid a disciple as the Magdalene.
There is substantial reason for regarding the Magdalene and the woman
who anoints Jesus as one and the same person. Could this person, we
wondered, also be one and the same with Mary of Bethany, sister of
Lazarus and
Martha? Could these women who, in the Gospels, appear in three different contexts in
fact be a single person? The medieval Church certainly regarded them as such, and so
did popular tradition. Many Biblical scholars today concur. There is abundant evidence to
support such a conclusion.
The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and John, for example, all cite the Magdalene as being
present at the Crucifixion. None of them cites Mary of Bethany.
But if Mary of Bethany was as devoted a disciple as she appears to be,
her absence would seem to be, at the least, remiss. Is it credible
that she not to mention her brother, Lazarus -would fail to witness the
climactic moment of Jesus's life? Such an omission would be both
inexplicable and reprehensible unless, of course, she was present and
cited by the Gospels as such under the name of the Magdalene. If the
Magdalene and Mary of
Bethany are one and the same, there is no question of the latter having been absent from
the Crucifixion.
The Magdalene can be identified with Mary of Bethany. The Magdalene can also be
identified with the woman who anoints Jesus. The Fourth Gospel identifies the woman
who anoints Jesus with Mary of Bethany. Indeed, the author of the Fourth Gospel is quite
explicit on the matter:
Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of
Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. (It was that Mary which anointed the
Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.)
(John 11:12)
And again, one chapter later:
Then Jesus six days before the passover came to
Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead.
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There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one
of them that sat at the table with him.
Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of
Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the
ointment. (John 12:1-3)
It is thus clear that Mary of Bethany and the woman who anoints Jesus are the same
woman. If not equally clear, it is certainly probable that this woman is also the Magdalene.
If Jesus was indeed married, there would thus seem to be only one candidate for his wife
one woman who recurs repeatedly in the Gospels under different names and in different
roles.
The Beloved Disciple
3) If the Magdalene and Mary of Bethany are the same woman, and if this woman
was Jesus' s wife, Lazarus would have been Jesus' s brother-in-law. Is there any
evidence in the Gospels to suggest that Lazarus did indeed enjoy such a Status?
Lazarus does not figure by name in the Gospels of Luke, Matthew and
Mark although his "resurrection from the dead' was originally contained
in
Mark's account and then excised. As a result Lazarus is known to posterity only through
the Fourth Gospel the Gospel of John. But here it is clear that he does enjoy some
species of preferential treatment which is not confined to being "raised from the dead'. In
this and a number of other respects, he would appear, if anything, to be closer to Jesus
than the disciples themselves. And yet, curiously enough, the Gospels do not even
number him among the disciples.
Unlike the disciples, Lazarus is actually menaced. According to the
Fourth
Gospel, the chief priests, on resolving to dispatch Jesus, decided to
kill
Lazarus as well (John 12:10). Lazarus would seem to have been active
in some way on Jesus's behalf which is more than can be said of some of
the disciples. In theory this should have qualified him to be a
disciple himself and yet he is still not cited as such. Nor is he said
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to have been present at the Crucifixion an apparently shameless
display of ingratitude in a man who, quite literally, owed Jesus his life. Granted, he might
have gone into hiding, given the threat directed against him. But it is extremely curious
that there is no further reference to him in the Gospels. He seems to have vanished
completely, and is never mentioned again. Or is he? We attempted to examine the
matter more closely.
After staying in Bethany for three months, Jesus retires with his disciples to the banks of
the Jordan, not much more than a day's distance away. Here a messenger hastens to
him with the news that Lazarus is ill. But the messenger does not refer to Lazarus by
name. On the contrary, he pro trays the sick man as someone of very special importance,
"Lord, behold, he whom thou lowest is sick." (John 1 1 :3)
Jesus's reaction to this news is distinctly odd. Instead of returning
post-haste to the succour of the man he supposedly loves, he blithely
dismisses the matter: "When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is
not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be
glorified thereby." (1 1 :4) And if his words are perplexing, his
actions are even more so: "When he heard therefore that he was sick, he
abode two days still in the same place where he was." (1 1 :6J In short
Jesus continues to dally at the Jordan for another two days despite the
alarming news he has received. At last he resolves to return to
Bethany. And then he flagrantly contradicts his previous statement by
telling the disciples that Lazarus is dead. He is still unperturbed
however. Indeed, he states plainly that Lazarus's "death' had served
some purpose and is to be turned to account: "Our friend Lazarus
sleepeth; but
I go, that I may awake him out of sleep." (11:11) And four verses
later he virtually admits that the whole affair has been carefully
stage-managed and arranged in advance: "And I am glad for your sakes
that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless, let
us go unto him." (1 1 :15) If such behaviour is bewildering, the
reaction of the disciples is no less so: "Then said Thomas, which is
called Didymus, unto his fellow disciples, Let us also go, that we may
die with him." (11:16) What does this mean? If
Lazarus is literally dead, surely the disciples have no intention of
joining him by a collective suicide! And how is one to account for
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Jesus's own carelessness the blase indifference with which he hears of
Lazarus's illness and his delay in returning to Bethany?
The explanations of the matter would seem to lie, as Professor Morton Smith suggests, in
a more or less standard "mystery school' initiation.
As
Professor Smith demonstrates, such initiations and their accompanying rituals were
common enough in the Palestine of Jesus's era. They often entailed a symbolic death
and rebirth, which were called by those names; sequestration in a tomb, which became a
womb for the acolyte's rebirth; a rite, which is now called baptism a symbolic immersion in
water; and a cup of wine, which was identified with the blood of the prophet or magician
presiding over the ceremony. By drinking from such a cup, the disciple consummated a
symbolic union with his teacher, the former becoming mystically "one' with the latter.
Significantly enough, it is precisely in these terms that Saint Paul explains the purpose of
baptism. And Jesus himself uses the same terms at the Last Supper.
As Professor Smith points out, Jesus's career is very similar to those of other magicians,
healers, wonder workers and miracle-workers of the period. 1 2 Throughout the Four
Gospels, for example, he consistently meets secretly with the people he is about to heal,
or speaks quietly with them alone.
Afterwards he often asks them not to divulge what transpired. And so far as the general
public is concerned, he speaks habitually in allegories and parables.
It would seem, then, that Lazarus, during Jesus's sojourn at the Jordan, has embarked on
a typical initiation rite, leading as such rites traditionally did to a symbolic resurrection and
rebirth. In this light the disciples' desire to "die with him' becomes perfectly
comprehensible as does Jesus's otherwise inexplicable complacency about the whole
affair.
Granted, Mary and Martha would appear to be genuinely distraught as would a number of
other people. But they may simply have misunderstood or misconstrued the point of the
exercise. Or perhaps something seemed to have gone wrong with the initiation a not
uncommon occurrence. Or perhaps the whole affair was a skilfully contrived piece of
stagecraft, whose true nature and purpose were known only to a very few.
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If the Lazarus incident does reflect a ritual initiation, he is
clearly receiving very preferential treatment. Among other things, he is apparently being
initiated before any of the disciples who, indeed, seem decidedly envious of his privilege.
But why should this hitherto unknown man of Bethany thus be singled out? Why should
he undergo an experience in which the disciples are so eager to join him? Why should
later, mystically oriented "heretics like the Carpocratians have made so much of the
matter?
And why should the entire episode have been expurgated from the Gospel
of
Mark? Perhaps because Lazarus was "he whom Jesus loved' more than the
other disciples. Perhaps because Lazarus had some special connection
with
Jesus -like that of brother-in-law. Perhaps both. It is possible that Jesus came to know
and love Lazarus precisely because Lazarus was his brother-in-law. In any case the love
is repeatedly stressed. When Jesus returns to Bethany and weeps, or feigns to weep, for
Lazarus's death, the bystanders echo the words of the messenger: "Behold how he loved
him!" (John 11:36)
The author of the Gospel of John the Gospel in which the Lazarus story figures does not
at any point identify himself as "John'. In fact he does not name himself at all. He does,
however, refer to himself by a most distinctive appellation. He constantly calls himself "the
beloved disciple', "the one whom Jesus loved', and clearly implies that he enjoys a unique
and preferred status over his comrades. At the Last Supper, for example, he flagrantly
displays his personal proximity to Jesus, and it is to him alone that Jesus confides the
means whereby betrayal will occur:
Now there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved.
Simon Peter therefore beckoned to him, that he should ask who it should be of whom he
spoke.
He then lying on Jesus' breast saith unto him, Lord, who is it?
Jesus answered, He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it. And when he
had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. (John 13:23-6)
Who is this "beloved disciple', on whose testimony the Fourth Gospel is
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based? All the evidence suggests that he is in fact Lazarus "he whom
Jesus loved'. It would seem, then, that
Lazarus and the "beloved disciple' are one and the same person, and
that
Lazarus is the real identity of "John'. This conclusion would seem to
be almost inevitable. Nor were we alone in reaching it. According to
Professor
William Brownlee, a leading Biblical scholar and one of the foremost experts on the Dead
Sea Scrolls: "From internal evidence in the Fourth Gospel .. . the conclusion is that the
beloved disciple is Lazarus of Bethany."
If Lazarus and the "beloved disciple' are one and the same, it would explain a number of
anomalies. It would explain Lazarus's mysterious disappearance from the Scriptural
account, and his apparent absence during the Crucifixion. For if Lazarus and the "beloved
disciple' were one and the same, Lazarus would have been present at the Crucifixion.
And it would have been to Lazarus that Jesus entrusted the care of his mother. The
words with which he did so might well be the words of a man referring to his brother-in-
law:
When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he
saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son!
Then saith he to the disciple. Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her
unto his own home. (John 19:26-7)
The last word of this quotation is particularly revelatory. For the
other disciples have left their homes in Galilee and, to all intents
and purposes, are homeless. Lazarus, however, does have a home that
crucial house in
Bethany, where Jesus himself was accustomed to stay.
After the priests are said to have decided on his death, Lazarus is not
again mentioned by name. He would appear to vanish completely. But if
he is indeed the "beloved disciple', he does not vanish after all, and
his movements and activities can be traced to the very end of the
Fourth
Gospel. And here, too, there is a curious episode that warrants examination. At the end
of the Fourth Gospel Jesus forecasts Peter's death and instructs Peter to "follow' him:
Then Peter, turning about, see th the disciple whom Jesus loved
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following; which also leaned on his breast at supper, and said, Lord,
which is he that betrayeth thee? Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this
man do?
Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me.
Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die: yet
Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die, but, if I will that he tarry till I come, what is that
to thee?
This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know
that his testimony is true. (John 21 :20-24)
Despite its ambiguous phraseology, the import of this passage would
seem to be clear. The "beloved disciple' has been explicitly
instructed to wait for
Jesus's return. And the text itself is quite emphatic in stressing that this return is not to be
understood symbolically in the sense of a "second coming'. On the contrary, it implies
something much more mundane. It implies that Jesus, after dispatching his other
followers out into the world, must soon return with some special commission for the
"beloved disciple'. It is almost as if they have specific, concrete arrangements to conclude
and plans to make.
If the "beloved disciple' is Lazarus, such collusion, unknown to the
other disciples, would seem to have a certain precedent. In the week
before the
Crucifixion, Jesus undertakes to make his triumphal entry into
Jerusalem; and in order to do so in accordance with Old Testament
prophecies of a
Messiah, he must be riding astride an ass. (Zechariah 9:9-10)
Accordingly an ass must be procured. In Luke's Gospel Jesus dispatches
two disciples to
Bethany, where, he tells them, they will find an ass awaiting them. They are instructed to
tell the beast's owner that the "Master has need of it'.
When everything transpires precisely as Jesus has forecast, it is
regarded as a sort of miracle. But is there really anything very
extraordinary about it? Does it not merely attest to carefully laid
plans? And would not the man from Bethany who provides an ass at the
appointed time seem to be
Lazarus?
This, certainly, is the conclusion of Doctor Hugh Schonfield."4 He
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argues convincingly that the arrange menu for Jesus's triumphal entry
into Jerusalem were entrusted to Lazarus, and that the other disciples
had no knowledge of them. If this was indeed the case, it attests to
an inner circle of Jesus's followers, a core of collaborators,
co-conspirators or family members who, alone, are admitted into their
master's confidence. Doctor Schonfield believes that Lazarus is part
of just such a circle. And his belief concurs with Professor Smith's
insistence on the preferential treatment Lazarus receives by virtue of
his initiation, or symbolic death, at Bethany. It is possible that
Bethany was a cult centre, a place reserved for the unique rituals over
which Jesus presided. If so, this might explain the otherwise
enigmatic occurrence of
Bethany elsewhere in our investigation. The Prieure de Sion had called
its "arch' at Rennes-leChateau "Bethanie'. And Sauniere, apparently at
the
Prieure de Sion's request, had christened his villa Villa Bethania.
In any case, the collusion which seems to elicit an ass from the "man
from
Bethany' may well be displaying itself again at the mysterious end of
the
Fourth Gospel when Jesus orders the "beloved disciple' to tarry until he returns. It would
seem that he and the "beloved disciple' have plans to make. And it is not unreasonable to
assume that these plans included the care of Jesus's family, At the Crucifixion he had
already entrusted his mother to the "beloved disciple's' custody. If he had a wife and
children, they, presumably, would have been entrusted to the "beloved disciple' as well.
This, of course, would be all the more plausible if the 'beloved disciple' were indeed his
brother-in-law.
According to much later tradition, Jesus's mother eventually died in
exile at Ephesus from whence the Fourth Gospel is said to have
subsequently issued. There is no indication, however, that the
"beloved disciple' attended Jesus's mother for the duration of her
life. According to Doctor
Schonfield, the Fourth Gospel was probably not composed at Ephesus, only reworked,
revised and edited by a Greek elder there who made it conform to his own ideas."
If the "beloved disciple' did not go to Ephesus, what became of him?
If he and Lazarus were one and the same that question can be answered,
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for tradition is quite explicit about what became of Lazarus.
According to tradition, as well as certain early Church writers,
Lazarus, the Magdalene,
Martha, Joseph of Arimathea and a few others, were transported by ship
to
Marseilles. "6 Here Joseph was supposedly consecrated by Saint Philip and sent on to
England, where he established a church at Glastonbury. Lazarus and the Magdalene,
however, are said to have remained in Gaul.
Tradition maintains that the Magdalene died at either Aix-en-Provence
or Saint Baume, and Lazarus at Marseilles after founding the first
bishopric there. One of their companions, Saint Maximin, is said to
have founded the first bishopric of Narbonne.*
If Lazarus and the "beloved disciple' were one and the same, there would thus be an
explanation for their joint disappearance. Lazarus, the true "beloved disciple', would seem
to have been set ashore at Marseilles, together with his sister who, as tradition
subsequently maintains, was carrying with her the Holy Grail, the "blood royal'. And the
arrangements for this escape and exile would seem to have been made by Jesus himself,
together with the "beloved disciple', at the end of the Fourth Gospel.
The Dynasty of Jesus
4) If Jesus was indeed married to the Magdalene, might such a marriage have
served some specific purpose? In other words, might it have been something more
than a conventional marriage? Might it have been a dynastic alliance of some
kind, with political implications and repercussions? Might a bloodline
resulting from such a marriage, in short, have fully warranted the appellation "blood
royal'?
The Gospel of Matthew states explicitly that Jesus was of royal blood a
genuine king, the lineal descendant of Solomon and David. If this is
true, he would have enjoyed a legitimate claim to the throne of a
united
Palestine and perhaps even the legitimate claim. And the inscription
affixed to the cross would have been much more than mere sadistic
derision, for Jesus would indeed have been "King of the Jews'. His
position, in many respects, would have been analogous to that of, say,
Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745. And thus he would have engendered the
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opposition he did precisely by virtue of his role the role of a priest
king who might possibly unify his country and the Jewish people, thereby posing <i serious
threat to both Herod and Rome.
Certain modern Biblical scholars have argued that Herod's famous "Massacre of the
Innocents' never in fact took place. Even if it did, it was probably not of the garish and
appalling proportions ascribed to it by the Gospels and subsequent tradition. And yet the
very perpetuation of the story would seem to attest to something some genuine alarm on
Herod's part, some very real anxiety about being deposed. Granted, Herod was an
extremely insecure ruler, hated by his enslaved subjects and sustained in power only by
Roman cohorts. But however precarious his position might have been, it cannot,
realistically speaking, have been seriously threatened by rumours of a mystical or spiritual
saviour of the kind with which the Holy Land at the time already abounded anyway. If
Herod was indeed worried, it can only have been by a very real, concrete, political threat
the threat posed by a man who possessed a more legitimate claim to the throne than his
own, and who could muster substantial popular support. The "Massacre of the Innocents'
may never have occurred, but the traditions relating to it reflect some concern on Herod's
part about a rival claim and, quite possibly, some action intended to forestall or preclude it.
Such a claim can only have been political in nature. And it must have warranted being
taken seriously.
To suggest that Jesus enjoyed such a claim is, of course, to challenge
the popular image of the "poor carpenter from Nazareth'. But there are
persuasive reasons for doing so. In the first place it is not
altogether certain that Jesus was from Nazareth. "Jesus of Nazareth'
is in fact a corruption, or mis translation of "Jesus the Nazorite' or
"Jesus the
Nazorean' or perhaps "Jesus of Gennesareth'. In the second place there
is considerable doubt as to whether the town of Nazareth actually
existed in
Jesus's time. It does not occur in any Roman maps, documents or
records. It is not mentioned in the Talmud. It is not mentioned,
still less associated with Jesus, in any of the writings of Saint Paul
-which were, after all, composed before the Gospels. And Flavius JosephllS the
foremost chronicler of the period, who commanded troops in
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Galilee and listed the province's towns makes no mention of Nazareth
either. It would seem, in short, that Nazareth did not appear as a town until sometime
after the revolt of nD. 68-74, and that Jesus's name became associated with it by virtue of
the semantic confusion accidental or deliberate which characterises so much of the New
Testament.
Whether Jesus was "of Nazareth' or not there is no indication that he was ever a "poor
carpenter'. 17 Certainly none of the Gospels portrays him as such. Indeed their evidence
suggests quite the contrary. He seems to be well educated for example. He seems to
have undergone training for the rabbinate, and to have consorted as frequently with
wealthy and influential people as with the poor Joseph of Arimathea, for instance, and
Nicodemus.
And the wedding at Cana would seem to bear further witness to Jesus's status and social
position.
This wedding does not appear to have been a modest, humble festival conducted by the
"common people'. On the contrary it bears all the marks of an extravagant aristocratic
union, a "high society' affair, attended by at least several hundred guests. There are
abundant servants, for example who hasten to do both Mary's and Jesus's bidding. There
is a "master of the feast' or "master of ceremonies' who, in the context, would have been a
kind of chief butler or perhaps even an aristocrat himself. Most clearly there is a positively
enormous quantity of wine. When Jesus "transmutes' the water into wine, he produces,
according to the "Good News Bible', no less than six hundred lit res which is more than
eight hundred bottles! And this is in addition to what has already been consumed.
All things considered, the wedding at Cana would seem to have been a sumptuous
ceremony of the gentry or aristocracy. Even if the wedding were not Jesus's own, his
presence at it, and his mother's, would suggest that they were members of the same
caste. This alone would explain the servants' obedience to them.
If Jesus was an aristocrat, and if he was married to the Magdalene, it is probable that she
was of comparable social station. And indeed, she would appear to be so. As we have
seen she numbered among her friends the wife of an important official at Herod's court.
But she may have been more important still.
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As we had discovered by tracing references in the "Prieure documents',
Jerusalem the Holy City and capital of Judaea had originally been the
property of the Tribe of Benjamin. Subsequently the
Benjamites were decimated in their war with the other tribes of Israel,
and many of them went into exile although, as the "Prieure documents'
maintain, "certain of them remained'. One descendant of this remnant
was
Saint Paul, who states explicitly that he is a Beni amite. (Romans 11:1)
Despite their conflict with the other tribes of Israel, the Tribe of
Benjamin appears to have enjoyed some special status. Among other
things, it provided Israel with her first king Saul, anointed by the
prophet
Samuel and with her first royal house. But Saul was eventually deposed
by
David, of the Tribe of Judah. And David not only deprived the Benjamites of their claim to
the throne. By establishing his capital at Jerusalem he deprived them of their rightful
inheritance as well.
According to all New Testament accounts, Jesus was of the line of David and thus also a
member of the Tribe of Judah. In Benjamite eyes this might have rendered him, at least in
some sense, a usurper. Any such objection might have been surmounted, however, if he
were married to a Benjamite woman.
Such a marriage would have constituted an important dynastic alliance,
and one filled with political consequence. If would not only have
provided
Israel with a powerful priest-king. It would also have performed the symbolic function of
returning Jerusalem to its original and rightful owners. Thus it would have served to
encourage popular unity and support, and consolidated whatever claim to the throne
Jesus might have possessed.
In the New Testament there is no indication of the Magdalene's tribal affiliation. In
subsequent legends, however, she is said to have been of : oyal lineage. And there are
other traditions which state specifically that she was of the Tribe of Benjamin.
At this point, the outlines of a coherent historical scenario began to be discernible. And,
as far as we could see, it made sound political sense.
Jesus would have been a priest-king of the line of David, who possessed
a legitimate claim to the throne. He would have consolidated his
position by a symbolically important dynastic marriage. He would then
have been poised to unify his country, mobilise the populace behind
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him, drive out the oppressors, depose their abject puppet and restore
the glory of the monarchy as it was under Solomon. Such a man would
indeed have been "King of the
Jews'.
The Crucifixion
5) As Gandhi's accomplishments bear witness, a spiritual leader, given
sufficient popular support, can pose a threat to an existing regime.
But a married man, with a rightful claim to the throne and children
through whom to establish a dynasty, is a threat of a decidedly more
serious nature. Is there any evidence in the Gospels that Jesus was in
fact regarded by the
Romans as such a threat?
During his interview with Pilate, Jesus is repeatedly called "King of
the
Jews'. In accordance with Pilate's instructions, an inscription of
this title is also affixed to the cross. As Professor S. G. F. Brandon
of
Manchester University argues, the inscription affixed to the cross must be regarded as
genuine as much so as anything in the New Testament. In the first place it figures, with
virtually no variation, in all four Gospels.
In the second place it is too compromising, too embarrassing an episode for subsequent
editors to have invented it.
In the Gospel of Mark, Pilate, after interrogating Jesus, asks the assembled dignitaries,
"What will ye then that I shall do unto him whom ye call the King of the Jews?" (Mark
15:12) This would seem to indicate that at least some Jews do actually refer to Jesus as
their king. At the same time, however, in all four Gospels Pilate also accords Jesus that
title.
There is no reason to suppose that he does so ironically or derisively. In the Fourth
Gospel he insists on it quite adamantly and seriously, despite a chorus of protests. In the
three Synoptic Gospels, moreover, Jesus himself acknowledged his claim to the title: "And
Pilate asked him. Art thou the King of the Jews? And he answering said unto him, Thou
say est it." (Mark 15:2) In the English translation this reply may sound ambivalent -
perhaps deliberately so. In the original Greek, however, its import is quite unequivocal. It
can only be interpreted as "Thou hast spoken correctly'. And thus the phrase is
interpreted whenever it appears elsewhere in the Bible.
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The Gospels were composed during and after the revolt of A.D. 68-74,
when Judaism had effectively ceased to exist as an organised social,
political and military force. What is more, the Gospels were composed
for a Greco-Roman audience for whom they had, of necessity, to be made
acceptable. Rome had just fought a bitter and costly war against the
Jews. In consequence it was perfectly natural to cast the Jews in the
role of villains. In the wake of the Judaean revolt, moreover, Jesus
could not possibly be portrayed as a political figure a figure in any
way linked to the agitation which culminated in the war. Finally the
role of the Romans in
Jesus's trial and execution had to be whitewashed and presented as
sympathetically as possible. Thus Pilate is depicted in the Gospels as
a decent, responsible and tolerant man, who consents only reluctantly
to the
Crucifixion." But despise these liberties taken with history, Rome's true position in the
affair can be discerned.
According to the Gospels, Jesus is initially condemned by the Sanhedrin
the Council of Jewish Elders who then bring him to Pilate and beseech
the
Procurator to pronounce against him. Historically this makes no sense
at all. In the three Synoptic Gospels Jesus is arrested and condemned
by the
Sanhedrin on the night of the Passover. But by Judaic law the
Sanhedrin was forbidden to meet over the Passover. "9 In the Gospels
Jesus's arrest and trial occur at night, before the Sanhedrin. By
Judaic law the Sanhedrin was forbidden to meet at night, in private
houses, or anywhere outside the precincts of the Temple. In the
Gospels the Sanhedrin is apparently un authorised to pass a death
sentence and this would ostensibly be the reason for bringing Jesus to
Pilate. However, the Sanhedrin was authorised to pass death sentences
by stoning, if not by crucifixion. If the
Sanhedrin had wished to dispose of Jesus, therefore, it could have sentenced him to
death by stoning on its own authority. There would have been no need to bother Pilate at
all.
There are numerous other attempts by the authors of the Gospels to transfer guilt and
responsibility from Rome. One such is Pilate's apparent offer of a dispensation his
readiness to free a prisoner of the crowd's choosing.
According to the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, this was a "custom of
the
Passover festival'. In fact it was no such thing. z Modern authorities
365
agree that no such policy ever existed on the part of the Romans, and
that the offer to liberate either
Jesus or Barabbas is sheer fiction. Pilate's reluctance to condemn
Jesus, and his grudging submission to the bullying pressure of the mob,
would seem to be equally fictitious. In reality it would have been
unthinkable for a
Roman Procurator and especially a Procurator as ruthless as Pilate to bow to the pressure
of a mob. Again, the purpose of such fictionalisation is clear enough to exonerate the
Romans, to transfer blame to the Jews and thereby to make Jesus acceptable to a Roman
audience.
It is possible, of course, that not all Jews were entirely innocent.
Even if the Roman administration feared a priest-king with a claim to
the throne, it could not embark overtly on acts of provocation acts
that might precipitate a full-scale rebellion. Certainly it would have
been more expedient for Rome if the priest-king were ostensibly
betrayed by his own people. It is thus conceivable that the Romans
employed certain Sadducees as, say, agents provocateurs. But even if
this were the case, the inescapable fact remains that Jesus was the
victim of a Roman administration, a
Roman court, a Roman sentence, Roman soldiery and a Roman execution an execution
which, in form, was reserved exclusively for enemies of Rome.
It was not for crimes against Judaism that Jesus was crucified, but for
crimes against the empire. z'
Who Was Barabbas?
6) Is there any evidence in the Gospels that Jesus actually did have children?
There is nothing explicit. But rabbis were expected, as a matter of course, to have
children; and if Jesus was a rabbi, it would have been most unusual for him to remain
childless. Indeed, it would have been unusual for him to remain childless whether he was
a rabbi or not.
Granted, these arguments, in themselves, do not constitute any positive
evidence. But there is evidence of a more concrete, more specific
kind. It consists of the elusive individual who figures in the Gospels
as Barabbas, or, to be more precise, as Jesus Barabbas for it is by
this name that he is identified in the
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Gospel of Matthew. If nothing else, the coincidence is striking.
Modern scholars are uncertain about the derivation and meaning of
"Barabbas'. "Jesus Barabbas' may be a corruption of "Jesus Berabbi'.
"Berabbi' was a title reserved for the highest and most esteemed rabbis and was placed
after the rabbi's given name. ""Jesus Berabbi' might therefore refer to Jesus himself.
Alternatively, "Jesus Barabbas' might originally have been "Jesus bar Rabbi' - "Jesus, son
of the Rabbi'. There is no record anywhere of Jesus's own father having been a rabbi.
But if Jesus had a son named after himself, that son would indeed have been "Jesus bar
Rabbi'.
There is one other possibility as well. "Jesus Barabbas' may derive
from
"Jesus bar Abba'; and since "Abba' is "father' in Hebrew, "Barabbas'
would then mean "son of the father' - a fairly pointless designation
unless the "father' is in some way special. If the "father' were
actually the
"Heavenly Father', then "Barabbas' might again refer to Jesus himself. On the other hand,
if Jesus himself is the "father', "Barabbas' would again refer to his son.
Whatever the meaning and derivation of the name, the figure of Barabbas is extremely
curious. And the more one considers the incident concerning him, the more apparent it
becomes that something irregular is going on and someone is attempting to conceal
something. In the first place Barabbas's name, like the Magdalene's, seems to have been
subjected to a deliberate and systematic blackening. Just as popular tradition depicts the
Magdalene as a harlot, so it depicts Barabbas as a "thief. But if Barabbas was any of the
things his name suggests, he is hardly likely to have been a common thief. Why then
blacken his name? Unless he was something else in reality something which the editors
of the New Testament did not want posterity to know.
Strictly speaking the Gospels themselves do not describe Barabbas as a
thief. According to Mark and Luke he is a political prisoner, a rebel
charged with murder and insurrection. In the Gospel of Matthew,
however,
Barabbas is described as a "notable prisoner'. And in the Fourth
Gospel
Barabbas is said to be (in the Greek) a les tai (John 18:40) This can
be translated as either "robber' or "bandit'. In its historical
context, however, it meant something quite different. Lestes was in
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fact the term habitually applied by the Romans to the Zealots23 the
militant nationalistic revolutionaries who for some time had been fomenting social
upheaval. Since Mark and Luke agree that Barabbas is guilty of insurrection, and since
Matthew does not contradict this assertion, it is safe to conclude that Barabbas was a
Zealot.
But this is not the only information available on Barabbas. According
to
Luke, he had been involved in a recent "disturbance', "sedition' or "riot' in the city. History
makes no mention of any such turmoil in Jerusalem at the time. The Gospels, however,
do. According to the Gospels, there had been a civic disturbance in Jerusalem, only a few
days before when Jesus and his followers overturned the tables of the money-lenders at
the Temple.
Was this the disturbance in which Barabbas was involved, and for which he was
imprisoned? It certainly seems likely. And in that case there is one obvious conclusion
that Barabbas was one of Jesus's entourage.
According to modern scholars, the "custom' of releasing a prisoner on
the
Passover did not exist. But even if it did, the choice of Barabbas
over
Jesus would make no sense. If Barabbas were indeed a common criminal, guilty of
murder, why would the people choose to have his life spared?
And if he were indeed a Zealot or a revolutionary, it is hardly likely
that
Pilate would have released so potentially dangerous a character, rather than a harmless
visionary who was quite prepared, ostensibly, to "render unto Caesar'. Of all the
discrepancies, inconsistencies and improbabilities in the Gospels, the choice of Barabbas
is among the most striking and most inexplicable. Something would clearly seem to lie
behind so clumsy and confusing a fabrication.
One modern writer has proposed an intriguing and plausible explanation.
He suggests that Barabbas was the son of Jesus and Jesus a legitimate
king.z4
If this were the case, the choice of Barabbas would suddenly make sense.
One must imagine an oppressed populace confronted with the imminent extermination of
their spiritual and political ruler the Messiah, whose advent had formerly promised so
much. In such circumstances, would not the dynasty be more important than the
individual? Would not the preservation of the bloodline be paramount, taking precedence
over everything else?
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Would not a people, faced with the dreadful choice, prefer to see
their king sacrificed in order that his offspring and his line might survive? If the line
survived, there would at least be hope for the future.
It is certainly not impossible that Barabbas was Jesus's son. Jesus is
generally believed to have been born around 6 sc. The Crucifixion
occurred no later than A.D. 36, which would make Jesus, at most,
forty-two years of age. But even if he was only thirty-three when he
died, he might still have fathered a son. In accordance with the
customs of the time, he might have married as early as sixteen or
seventeen. Yet even if he did not marry until aged twenty, he might
still have had a son aged thirteen who, by
Judaic custom, would have been considered a man. And, of course, there may well have
been other children too. Such children could have been conceived at any point up to
within a day or so of the Crucifixion.
The Crucifixion in Detail
7) Jesus could well have sired a number of children prior to the
Crucifjxion. If he survived the Crucifixion, however, the likelihood of offspring would be
still further increased. Is there any evidence that Jesus did indeed survive the Crucifixion
or that the Crucifixion was in some way a fraud?
Given the portrait of him in the Gospels, it is inexplicable that Jesus was crucified at all.
According to the Gospels, his enemies were the established Jewish interests in
Jerusalem. But such enemies, if they in fact existed, could have stoned him to death of
their own accord and on their own authority, without involving Rome in the matter.
According to the
Gospels, Jesus had no particular quarrel with Rome and did not
violate
Roman law. And yet he was punished by the Romans, in accordance with
Roman law and Roman procedures. And he was punished by crucifixion a
penalty exclusively reserved for those guilty of crimes against the
empire. If
Jesus was indeed crucified, he cannot have been as apolitical as the
Gospels depict him. On the contrary, he must, of necessity, have done something to
provoke Roman as opposed to Jewish -wrath.
369
Whatever the trespasses for which Jesus was crucified, his apparent
death on the cross is fraught with inconsistencies. There is, quite simply, no reason why
his Crucifixion, as the Gospels depict it, should have been, fatal. The contention that it
was warrants closer scrutiny.
The Roman practice of crucifixion adhered to very precise
procedures. zs
After sentence a victim would be flogged and consequently weakened by loss of blood.
His outstretched arms would then be fastened usually by thongs but sometimes by nails to
a heavy wooden beam placed horizontally across his neck and shoulders. Bearing this
beam, he would then be led to the place of execution. Here, with the victim hanging from
it, the beam would be raised and attached to a vertical post or stake.
Hanging thus from his hands, it would be impossible for the victim to breathe unless his
feet were also fixed to the cross, thus enabling him to press down on them and relieve the
pressure on his chest. But, despite the agony, a man suspended with his feet fixed and
especially a fit and healthy man would usually survive for at least a day or two. Indeed,
the victim would often take as much as a week to die from exhaustion, from thirst, or, if
nails were used, from blood poisoning. The attenuated agony could be terminated more
quickly by breaking the victim's legs or knees which, in the Gospels, Jesus's executioners
are about to do before they are forestalled. Breaking of the legs or knees was not an
additional sadistic torment. On the contrary, it was an act of mercy a coup de grace which
caused a very rapid death. With nothing to support him, the pressure on the victim's chest
would become intolerable, and he would quickly asphyxiate.
There is consensus among modern scholars that only the Fourth Gospel
rests on an eyewitness account of the Crucifixion. According to the
Fourth
Gospel, Jesus's feet were affixed to the cross thus relieving the pressure on his chest
muscles and his legs were not broken. He should therefore, in theory at least, have
survived for a good two or three days.
And yet he is on the cross for no more than a few hours before being pronounced dead.
In the Gospel of Mark, even Pilate is astonished by the rapidity with which death occurs
(Mark 15:44).
What can have constituted the cause of death? Not the spear in his
side, for the Fourth Gospel maintains that
370
Jesus was already dead when this wound was inflicted on him. (John
There is only one explanation a combination of exhaustion, fatigue, general debilitation
and the trauma of the scourging. But not even these factors should have proved fatal so
soon. It is possible, of course, that they did despite the laws of physiology, a man will
sometimes die from a single relatively innocuous blow. But there would still seem to be
something suspicious about the affair. According to the Fourth Gospel, Jesus's
executioners are on the verge of breaking his legs, thus accelerating his death. Why
bother, if he was already moribund? There would, in short, be no point in breaking
Jesus's legs unless death were not in fact imminent.
In the Gospels Jesus's death occurs at a moment that is almost too
convenient, too felicitously opportune. It occurs just in time to
prevent his executioners breaking his legs. And by doing so, it
permits him to fulfill an Old Testament prophecy. Modern authorities
agree that Jesus, quite unabashedly, modelled and perhaps contrived his
life in accordance with such prophecies, which heralded the coming of a
Messiah. It was for this reason that an ass had to be procured from
Bethany on which he could make his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. And
the details of the Crucifixion seem likewise engineered to enact the
prophecies of the Old Testament .26
In short Jesus's apparent and opportune demise' which in the nick of time, saves him from
certain death and enables him to fulfill a prophecy is, to say the least, suspect. It is too
perfect, too precise to be coincidence. It must either be a later interpolation after the fact,
or part of a carefully contrived plan. There is much additional evidence to suggest the
latter.
In the Fourth Gospel Jesus, hanging on the cross, declares that he thirsts.
In reply to this complaint he is proffered a sponge allegedly soaked in
vinegar an incident that also occurs in the other Gospels. This sponge
is generally interpreted as another act of sadistic derision. But was
it really? Vinegar or soured wine is a temporary stimulant, with
effects not unlike smelling salts. It was often used at the time to
resuscitate flagging slaves on galleys. For a wounded and exhausted
371
man, a sniff or taste of vinegar would induce a restorative effect, a
momentary surge of energy. And yet in Jesus's case the effect is just
the contrary. No sooner does he inhale or taste the sponge then he
pronounces his final words and "gives up the ghost'. Such a reaction
to vinegar is physiologically inexplicable. On the other hand such a
reaction would be perfectly compatible with a sponge soaked not in
vinegar, but in some type of soporific drug a compound of opium and/or
belladonna, for instance, commonly employed in the Middle East at the
time. But why proffer a soporific drug? Unless the act of doing so,
along with all the other components of the Crucifixion, were elements
of a complex and ingenious stratagem a stratagem designed to produce a
semblance of death when the victim, in fact, was still alive. Such a
stratagem would not oily have saved
Jesus's life, but also have realised the Old Testament prophecies of
a
Messiah.
There are other anomalous aspects of the Crucifixion which point to precisely such a
stratagem. According to the Gospels Jesus is crucified at a place called Golgotha, "the
place of the skull'. Later tradition attempts to identify Golgotha as a barren, more or less
skull-shaped hill to the north-west of Jerusalem. And yet the Gospels themselves make it
clear that the site of the Crucifixion is very different from a barren skull-shaped hill. The
Fourth Gospel is most explicit on the matter: "Now in the place where he was crucified
there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid."
(John 19:41) Jesus, then, was crucified not on a barren skull-shaped hill, nor, for that
matter, in any "public place of execution'. He was crucified in or immediately adjacent to a
garden containing a private tomb. According to Matthew (27:60) this tomb and garden
were the personal property of Joseph of Arimathea who, according to all four Gospels,
was both a man of wealth and a secret disciple of Jesus.
Popular tradition depicts the Crucifixion as a large scale public
affair, accessible to the multitude and attended by a cast of
thousands. And yet the Gospels themselves suggest very different
circumstances. According to
Matthew, Mark and Luke, the Crucifixion is witnessed by most people,
including the women, from "afar off (Luke 23:49). It would thus seem
clear that Jesus's death was not a public event, but a private one a
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private crucifixion performed on private property. A number of modern
scholars argue that the actual site was probably the Garden of Gethsemane.
If Gethsemane were indeed the private land of one of Jesus's secret disciples, this would
explain why Jesus, prior to the Crucifixion, could make such free use of the place."
Needless to say a private crucifixion on private property leaves considerable room for a
hoax a mock crucifixion, a skilfully stage-managed ritual. There would have been only a
few eye-witnesses immediately present. To the general populace the drama would only
have been visible, as the Synoptic Gospels confirm, from some distance. And from such
a distance, it would not have been apparent who in fact was being crucified. Or if he was
actually dead.
Such a charade would, of course, have necessitated some connivance and
collusion on the part of Pontius Pilate or of someone influential in
the
Roman administration. And indeed such connivance and collusion is highly probable.
Granted, Pilate was a cruel and tyrannical man. But he was also corrupt and susceptible
to bribes. The historical Pilate, as opposed to the one depicted in the Gospels, would not
have been above sparing Jesus's life in exchange for a sizeable sum of money and
perhaps a guarantee of no further political agitation.
Whatever his motivation, there is, in any case, no question that Pilate
is somehow intimately involved in the affair. He acknowledges Jesus's
claim as
"King of the Jews'. He also expresses, or feigns to express, surprise
that
Jesus's death occurs as quickly as it apparently does. And, perhaps most important of all,
he grants Jesus's body to Joseph of Arimathe<i.
According to Roman law at the time, a crucified man was denied all
burial. =a Indeed guards were customarily posted to prevent relatives or
friends removing the bodies of the dead. The victim would simply be
left on the cross, at the mercy of the elements and carrion birds. Yet
Pilate, in a flagrant breach of procedure, readily grants Jesus's body
to Joseph of
Arimathea. This clearly attests to some complicity on Pilate's part.
And it may attest to other things as well.
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In English translations of Mark's Gospel Joseph asks Pilate for
Jesus's body. Pilate expresses surprise that Jesus is dead, checks
with a centurion, then, satisfied, consents to Joseph's request. This
would appear straightforward enough at first glance; but in the
original
Greek version of Mark's Gospel, the matter becomes rather more complicated.
In the Greek version when Joseph asks for Jesus's body, he uses the
word soma a word applied only to a living body. Pilate, assenting to
the request, employs the word ptoma which means "corpse'. =9 According
to the
Greek, then, Joseph explicitly asks for a living body and Pilate grants him what he thinks,
or pretends to think, is a dead one.
Given the prohibition against burying crucified men, it is also extraordinary that Joseph
receives any body at all. On what grounds does he receive it? What claim does he have
to Jesus's body? If he was a secret disciple, -he could hardly plead any claim without
disclosing his secret discipleship unless Pilate was already aware of it, or unless there
was some other factor involved which militated in Joseph's favour.
There is little information about Joseph of Arimathea. The Gospels report only that he
was a secret disciple of Jesus, possessed great wealth and belonged to the Sanhedrin the
Council of Elders which ruled the Judaic community of Jerusalem under Roman auspices.
It would thus seem apparent that Joseph was an influential man. And this conclusion
receives confirmation from his dealings with Pilate, and from the fact that he possesses a
tract of land with a private tomb.
Medieval tradition portrays Joseph of Arimathea as a custodian of the
Holy
Grail; and Perceval is said to be of his lineage. According to other later traditions, he is in
some way related by blood to Jesus and Jesus's family.
If this was indeed the case, it would, at very least, have furnished
him with some plausible claim to Jesus's body -for while Pilate would
hardly grant the corpse of an executed criminal to a random stranger,
he might well do so, with the incentive of a bribe, to the dead man's
kin. If Joseph - a wealthy and influential member of the Sanhedrin was
indeed Jesus's kin, he bears further testimony to Jesus's aristocratic
pedigree. And if he was Jesus's kin, his association with the Holy
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Grail the "blood royal' would be all the more explicable. The
Scenario
We had already sketched a tentative hypothesis which proposed a bloodline descended
from Jesus. We now began to enlarge on that hypothesis and albeit still provisionally fill in
a number of crucial details. As we did so, the overall picture began to gain both
coherence and plausibility.
It seemed increasingly clear that Jesus was a priest-king an aristocrat
and legitimate claimant to the throne -embarking on an attempt to
regain his rightful heritage. He himself would have been a native of
Galilee, a traditional hotbed of opposition to the Roman regime. At
the same time, he would have had numerous noble, rich and influential
supporters throughout
Palestine, including the capital city of Jerusalem; and one of these supporters, a powerful
member of the Sanhedrin, may also have been his kin.
In the Jerusalem suburb of Bethany, moreover, was the home of either his wife or his
wife's family; and here, on the eve of his triumphal entry into the capital, the aspiring
priest-king resided. Here he established the centre for his mystery cult. Here he
augmented his following by performing ritual initiations, including that of his brother-in-law.
Such an aspiring priest-king would have generated powerful opposition in certain quarters
inevitably among the Roman administration and perhaps among entrenched Judaic
interests represented by the Sadducees. One or both of these interests apparently
contrived to thwart his bid for the throne.
But in their attempt to exterminate him they were not as successful as
they had hoped to be. For the priest-king would seem to have had
friends in high places; and these friends, working in collusion with a
corrupt, easily bribed Roman Procurator, appear to have engineered a
mock crucifixion on private grounds, inaccessible to all but a select
few. With the general populace kept at a convenient distance, an
execution was then staged in which a substitute took the priest-king's
place on the cross, or in which the priest-king himself did not
actually die. Towards dusk which would have further impeded visibility
a "body' was removed to an opportunely adjacent tomb, from which, a day
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or two later, it "miraculously' disappeared. If our scenario was
accurate, where did Jesus go then? So far as our hypothesis of a
bloodline was concerned, the answer to that question did not
particularly matter. According to certain~ Islamic and Indian legends,
he eventually died at a ripe old age, somewhere in the East in Kashmir,
it is claimed most frequently. On the other hand, an Australian
journalist has put forward an intriguing and persuasive argument that
Jesus died at
Masada when the fortress fell to the Romans in A.D. 74 by which time he would have
been approaching his eightieth year."
According to the letter we received, the documents found by Berenger
Sauniere at Rennes-leChateau contained "incontrovertible proof that Jesus was alive in
A.D. 45, but there is no indication as to where.
One likely possibility would be Egypt, and specifically Alexandria
-where, at about the same time, the sage Ormus is said to have created the Rose-
Croix by amalgamating Christianity with earlier, pre-Christian mysteries. It
has even been hinted that Jesus' s mummified body may be concealed somewhere in
the environs of Rennes-leChateau -which would explain the ciphered message in
Sauniere' s parchments "IL EST LA MORT' ("He is there dead').
We are not prepared to assert that he accompanied his family to Marseilles.
In fact, circumstances would argue against it. He might not have been in any condition to
travel, and his presence would have constituted a threat to his relatives' safety. He may
have deemed it more important to remain in the Holy Land like his brother, Saint James to
pursue his objectives there. In short, we can offer no real suggestion about what became
of him any more than the Gospels themselves do.
For the purposes of our hypothesis, however, what happened to Jesus was
of less importance than what happened to the holy family and especially
to his brother-in-law, his wife and his children. If our scenario was
correct, they, together with Joseph of Arimathea and certain others,
were smuggled by ship from the Holy Land. And when they were set
ashore at Marseilles, the Magdalene would indeed have brought the
Sangraal the "blood royal', the scion of the house of David into
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France. 13 The Secret the Church Forbade
We were well aware, of course, that our scenario did not concur with
established Christian teachings. But the more we researched the more
apparent it became that those teachings, as they have been passed down
through the centuries, represent only a highly selective compilation of
fragments, subjected to stringent expurgation and revision. The New
Testament, in other words, offers a portrait of Jesus and his age that conforms to the
needs of certain vested interests of certain groups and individuals who had, and to a
significant degree still have, an important stake in the matter. And anything that might
compromise or embarrass these interests like the "secret' Gospel of Mark, for example
has been duly excised. So much has been excised, as a matter of fact, that a sort of
vacuum has been created. In this vacuum speculation becomes both justified and
necessary.
If Jesus was a legitimate claimant to the throne, it is probable that he was supported, at
least initially, by a relatively small percentage of the populace his immediate family from
Galilee, certain other members of his own aristocratic social class, and a few strategically
placed representatives in Judaea and the capital city of Jerusalem.
Such a following, albeit distinguished, would hardly have been
sufficient to ensure the realisation of his objectives the success of
his bid for the throne. In consequence he would have been obliged to
recruit a more substantial following from other classes in the same way
that Bonnie
Prince Charlie, to pursue a previous analogy, did in 1745.
How does one recruit a sizeable following? Obviously by promulgating a
message calculated to enlist their allegiance and support. Such a
message need not necessarily have been as cynical as those associated
377
with modern politics. On the contrary it may have been promulgated in
perfectly good faith, with thoroughly noble and burning idealism. But despite its distinctly
religious orientation, its primary objective would have been the same as those of modern
politics to ensure the adherence of the populace. Jesus promulgated a message which
attempted to do just that to offer hope to the downtrodden, the afflicted, the
disenfranchised, the oppressed. In short it was a message with a promise. If the modern
reader overcomes his prejudices and preconceptions on the matter, he will discern a
mechanism extraordinarily akin to that visible everywhere in the world today a mechanism
whereby people are, and always have been, united in the name of a common cause and
welded into an instrument for the overthrow of a despotic regime. The point is that
Jesus's message was both ethical and political. It was directed to a particular segment of
the populace in accordance with political considerations. For it would only have been
among the oppressed, the downtrodden, the disenfranchised and the afflicted that he
could have hoped to recruit a sizeable following. The Sadducees, who had come to terms
with the Roman occupation, would have been as loath as all the Sadducees throughout
history to part with what they possessed, or to risk their security and stability.
Jesus's message, as it appears in the Gospels, is neither wholly new
nor wholly unique. It is probable that he himself was a Pharisee, and
his teachings contain a number of elements of Pharisaic doctrine. As
the Dead
Sea Scrolls attest, they also contain a number of important aspects
of
Essene thought. But if the message, as such, was not entirely original, the means of
transmitting it probably was. Jesus himself was undoubtedly an immensely charismatic
individual. He may well have had an aptitude for healing and other such "miracles'. He
certainly possessed a gift for communicating his ideas by means of evocative and vivid
parables which did not require any sophisticated training in his audience, but were
accessible, in some sense, to the populace at large.
Moreover, unlike his
Essene precursors, Jesus was not obliged to confine himself to
forecasting the advent of a Messiah. He could claim to be that
Messiah. And this, quite naturally, would have imparted a much greater
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authority and credibility to his words. It is clear that by the time
of his triumphal entry into Jerusalem Jesus had recruited a following. But this following
would have been composed of two quite distinct elements whose interests were not
precisely the same.
On the one hand there would have been a small nucleus of "initiates' immediate family,
other members of the nobility, wealthy and influential supporters, whose primary objective
was to see their candidate installed on the throne. On the other hand there would have
been a much larger entourage of "common people' the "rank and file' of the movement
whose primary objective was to see the message, and the promise it contained, fulfilled.
It is important to recognise the distinction between these two factions.
Their political objective to establish Jesus on the throne would have been the same. But
their motivations would have been essentially different.
When the enterprise failed, as it obviously did, the uneasy alliance between these two
factions "adherents of the message' and adherents of the family would seem to have
collapsed. Confronted by debacle and the threat of imminent annihilation, the family
would have placed a priority on the single factor which, from time immemorial, has been of
paramount importance to noble and royal families preservation of the bloodline at all costs
and, if necessary, in exile. For the "adherents of the message' however, the family's
future would have become irrelevant. For them survival of the bloodline would have been
of secondary consequence. Their primary objective would have been perpetuation and
dissemination of the message.
Christianity, as it evolves through its early centuries and eventually comes down to us
today, is a product of the "adherents of the message'.
The course of its spread and development has been too widely charted by
other scholars to necessitate much attention here. Suffice it to say
that with
Saint Paul, 'the message' had already begun to assume a crystallised and definitive form;
and this form became the basis on which the whole theological edifice of Christianity was
erected. By the time the Gospels were composed, the basic tenets of the new religion
were virtually complete.
The new religion was oriented primarily towards a Roman or Romanised
379
audience. Thus the role of Rome in Jesus's death was, of necessity,
whitewashed, and guilt was transferred to the Jews. But this was not the only liberty taken
with events to render them palatable to the Roman world. For the Roman world was
accustomed to deifying its rulers, and Caesar had already been officially instated as a
god. In order to compete, Jesus whom nobody had previously deemed divine had to be
deified as well. In Paul's hands he was.
Before it could be successfully disseminated from Palestine to Syria,
Asia Minor, Greece, Egypt, Rome and Western Europe the new religion had
to be made acceptable to the people of those regions. And it had to be
capable of holding its own against already established creeds. The new
god, in short, had to be comparable in power, in majesty, in repertoire
of miracles, to those he was intended to displace. If Jesus was to
gain a foothold in the Romanised world of his time, he had perforce to
become a fully fledged god. Not a Messiah in the old sense of that
term, not a priest-king, but God incarnate who, like his Syrian,
Phoenician, Egyptian and classical counterparts, passed through the
underworld and the harrowing of Hell and emerged, rejuvenated, with the
spring. It was at this point that the idea of the Resurrection first
assumed such crucial importance, and for a fairly obvious reason to
place Jesus on a par with Tammuz,
Adonis, Attis, Osiris and all the other dying and reviving gods who
populated both the world and the consciousness of their time. For
precisely the same reason the doctrine of the virgin birth was
promulgated. And the
380
Easter festival -the festival of death and resurrection was made to coincide with the spring
381
382
Given the need to disseminate a god myth, the actual corporeal family
of the "god', and the political and dynastic elements in his story,
would have become superfluous. Fettered as they were to a specific
time and place, they would have detracted from his claim to
universality. Thus, to further the claim of universality, all
political and dynastic elements were rigorously excised from Jesus's
biography. And thus all references to
Zealots, for example, and Essenes, were also discreetly removed. Such
references would have been, at the very least, embarrassing. It would
383
not have appeared seemly for a god to be involved in a complex and
ultimately ephemeral political and dynastic conspiracy and especially one that failed. In
the end nothing was left but what was contained in the Gospels an account of austere,
mythic simplicity, occurring only incidentally in the Roman-occupied Palestine of the first
century and primarily in the eternal present of all myth.
While "the message' developed in this fashion, the family and its supporters do not seem
to have been idle. Julius Africanus, writing in the first century, reports that Jesus's
surviving relatives bitterly accused the Herodian rulers of destroying the genealogies of
Jewish nobles, thereby removing all evidence that might challenge their claim to the
throne. And these same relatives are said to have "migrated through the world', carrying
with them certain genealogies which had escaped the destruction of documents during the
revolt between A.D. 66 and 74."
For the propagators of the new myth, the existence of this family would quickly have
become more than an irrelevance. It would have become a potential embarrassment of
daunting proportions. For the family who could bear first-hand testimony to what really
and historically happened would have constituted a dangerous threat to the myth. Indeed,
on the basis of first-hand knowledge, the family could have exploded the myth completely.
Thus in the early days of Christianity all mention of a noble or royal
family, of a bloodline, of political or dynastic ambitions would have
had to be suppressed. And since the cynical realities of the situation
must be acknowledged the family itself, who might betray the new
religion, should, if at all possible, be exterminated. Hence the need
for the utmost secrecy on the part of the family. Hence the
intolerance of early Church fathers towards any deviation from the
orthodoxy they endeavoured to impose: And hence also, perhaps, one of
the origins of anti-Semitism. In effect the "adherents of the message'
and propagators of the myth would have accomplished a dual purpose by
blaming the Jews and exonerating the
Romans. They would not only have made the myth and "the message'
palatable to a Roman audience. They would also, since the family was
Jewish, have impugned the family's credibility. And the anti-Jewish
feeling they engendered would have furthered their objectives still
384
more. If the family had found refuge in a Jewish community somewhere
within the empire, popular persecution might, in its momentum, conveniently silence
dangerous witnesses.
By pandering to a Roman audience, deifying Jesus and casting the Jews
as scapegoats, the spread of what subsequently became Christian
orthodoxy was assured of success. The position of this orthodoxy began
to consolidate itself definitively in the second century, principally
through Irenaeus,
Bishop of Lyons around A.D. 180. Probably more than any other early Church father,
Irenaeus contrived to impart to Christian theology a stable and coherent form. He
accomplished this primarily by means of a voluminous work, Libros Quinque Adversus
Haereses ("Five Books against Heresies'). In his exhaustive opus Irenaeus catalogued all
deviations from the coalescing orthodoxy, and vehemently condemned them. Deploring
diversity, he maintained there could be only one valid church, outside which there could
be no salvation. Whoever challenged this assertion, Irenaeus declared to be a heretic to
be expelled and, if possible, destroyed.
Among the numerous diverse forms of early Christianity, it was Gnosticism that incurred
Irenaeus's most vituperative wrath. Gnosticism rested on personal experience, personal
union with the divine. For Irenaeus this naturally undermined the authority of priests and
bishops, and so impeded the attempt to impose uniformity. As a result he devoted his
energies to suppressing Gnosticism. To this end it was necessary to discourage
individual speculation, and to encourage unquestioning faith in fixed dogma. A theological
system was required, a structure of codified tenets which allowed of no interpretation by
the individual. In opposition to personal experience and gnosis, Irenaeus insisted on a
single "catholic' (that is universal) church resting on apostolic foundation and succession.
And to implement the creation of such a church, Irenaeus recognised the need for a
definitive canon a fixed list of authoritative writings.
Accordingly he compiled such a canon, sifting through the available
works, including some, excluding others. Irenaeus is the first writer
whose New
Testament canon conforms essentially to that of the present day.
385
Such measures, of course, did not prevent the spread of early
heresies. On the contrary, they continued to flourish. But with
Irenaeus, orthodoxy the type of Christianity promulgated by the "adherents of the
message' assumed a coherent form that ensured its survival and eventual triumph. It is
not unreasonable to claim that Irenaeus paved the way for what occurred during and
immediately after the reign of Constantine under whose auspices the Roman Empire
became, in some sense, a Christian empire.
The role of Constantine in the history and development of Christianity has been fals5fied,
misrepresented and misunderstood. The spurious eighth-century "Donation of
Constantine', discussed in Chapter 9, has served to confuse matters even further in the
eyes of subsequent writers.
Nevertheless, Constantine is often credited with the decisive victory of the "adherents of
the message' and not wholly without justification. We were therefore obliged to consider
him more closely, and in order to do so we had to dispel certain of the more fanciful and
specious accomplishments ascribed to him.
According to later Church tradition. Constantine had inherited from
his father a sympathetic predisposition towards Christianity. In fact
this predisposition seems to have been primarily a matter of
expediency, for
Christians by then were numerous and Constantine needed all the help he
could get against Maxentius, his rival for the imperial throne. In
A.D.213
Maxentius was routed at the Battle of Milvian Bridge, thus leaving
Constantine's claim unchallenged. Immediately before this crucial
engagement Constantine is said to have had a vision later reinforced by
a prophetic dream of a luminous cross hanging in the sky. A sentence
was supposedly inscribed across it In Hoc Signo Vinces ("By this sign
you will conquer'). Tradition recounts that Constantine, deferring to
this celestial portent, ordered the shields of his troops hastily
emblazoned with the Christian monogram the Greek letter Chi Rho, the
first two letters of the word "Christos'. As a result Constantine's
victory over
Maxentius at Milvian Bridge came to represent a miraculous triumph of
Christianity over paganism.
This, then, is the popular Church tradition, on the basis of which
Constantine is often thought to have "converted the Roman Empire to
386
Christianity'. In actual fact, however, Constantine did no such
thing. But in order to decide precisely what he did do, we must examine the evidence
more closely.
In the first place Constantine's "conversion' if that is the appropriate word does not seem
to have been Christian at all but unabashedly pagan.
He appears to have had some sort of vision, or numinous experience, in
the precincts of a pagan temple to the Gallic Apollo, either in the
Vosges or near Autun. According to a witness accompanying
Constantine's army at the time, the vision was of the sun god the deity
worshipped by certain cults under the name of "Sol Invictus', "the
Invincible Sun'. There is evidence that Constantine, just before his
vision, had been initiated into a Sol
Invictus cult. In any case the Roman Senate, after the Battle of
Milvian
Bridge, erected a triumphal arch in the Colosseum. According to the
inscription on this arch, Constantine's victory was won "through the
prompting of the Deity'. But the Deity in question was not Jesus. It
was
Sol Invictus, the pagan sun god. z
Contrary to tradition, Constantine did not make Christianity the
official state religion of Rome. The state religion of Rome under
Constantine was, in fact, pagan sun worship; and Constantine, all his
life, acted as its chief priest. Indeed his reign was called a "sun
emperor ship and Sol
Invictus figured everywhere including the imperial banners and the
coinage of the realm. The image of Constantine as a fervent convert
to
Christianity is clearly wrong. He himself was not even baptised until
337 when he lay on his deathbed and was apparently too weakened or too
apathetic to protest. Nor can he be credited with the Chi Rho
monogram. An inscription bearing this monogram was found on a tomb at
Pompeii, dating from two and a half centuries before. 3
The cult of Sol Invictus was Syrian in origin and imposed by Roman
emperors on their subjects a century before Constantine. Although it
contained elements of Baal and Astarte worship, it was essentially
monotheistic. In effect, it posited the sun god as the sum of all
attributes of all other gods, and thus peacefully subsumed its
potential rivals. Moreover, it conveniently harmonised with the cult
of Mithras which was also prevalent in Rome and the empire at the time,
387
and which also involved solar worship. For Constantine the cult of
Sol Invictus was, quite simply, expedient. His primary, indeed obsessive, objective was
unity unity in politics, in religion and in territory. A cult, or state religion, that included all
other cults within it obviously abetted this objective. And it was under the auspices of the
Sol Invictus cult that Christianity consolidated its position.
Christian orthodoxy had much in common with the cult of Sol Invictus;
and thus the former was able to flourish unmolested under the taller's
umbrella of tolerance. The cult of Sol Invictus, being essentially
monotheistic, paved the way for the monotheism of Christianity. And
the cult of Sol
Invictus was convenient in other respects as well -respects which both modified and
facilitated the spread of Christianity. By an edict promulgated in A.D. 321 , for example,
Constantine ordered the law courts closed on 'the venerable day of the sun', and decreed
that this day be a day of rest. Christianity had hitherto held the Jewish Sabbath Saturday
as sacred. Now, in accordance with Constantine's edict, it transferred its sacred day to
Sunday. This not only brought it into harmony with the existing regime, but also permitted
it to further dissociate itself from its Judaic origins. Until the fourth century, moreover,
Jesus's birthday had been celebrated on January 6th.
For the cult of Sol Invictus, however, the crucial day of the year was
December 25th the festival of Natalis
Invictus, the birth (or rebirth) of the sun, when the days began to grow longer. In this
respect, too, Christianity brought itself into alignment with the regime and the established
state religion.
The cult of Sol Invictus meshed happily with that of Mithras so much
so, indeed, that the two are often confused. 4 Both emphasised the
status of the sun. Both held Sunday as sacred. Both celebrated a
major birth festival on
December 25th. As a result Christianity could also find points of convergence with
Mithraism the more so as Mithraism stressed the immortality of the soul, a future judgment
and the resurrection of the dead.
In the interests of unity Constantine deliberately chose to blur the distinctions between
Christianity, Mithraism and Sol Invictus deliberately chose not to see any contradiction
between them. Thus he tolerated the deified Jesus as the earthly manifestation of Sol
Invictus.
388
Thus he would build a Christian church and, at the same time, statues
of the Mother
Goddess Cybele and of Sol Invictus, the sun god the latter being an
image of himself, bearing his features. In such eclectic and
ecumenical gestures, the emphasis on unity can be seen again. Faith,
in short, was for
Constantine a political matter; and any faith that was conducive to unity was treated with
forbearance.
While Constantine was not, therefore, the "good Christian' that later tradition depicts, he
consolidated, in the name of unity and uniformity, the status of Christian orthodoxy. In
A.D. 325, for example, he convened the Council of Nicea. At this council the dating of
Easter was established.
Rules were framed which defined the, authority of bishops, thereby paving the way for a
concentration of power in ecclesiastical hands.
Most important of all, the Council of Nicea decided, by vote, 5 that
Jesus was a god, not a mortal prophet. Again, however, it must be
emphasised that
Constantine's paramount consideration was not piety but unity and
expediency. As a god Jesus could be associated conveniently with Sol
Invictus. As a mortal prophet he would have been more difficult to accommodate. In
short, Christian orthodoxy lent itself to a politically desirable fusion with the official state
religion; and in so far as it did so Constantine conferred his support upon Christian
orthodoxy.
Thus, a year after the Council of Nicea, he sanctioned the confiscation
and destruction of all works that challenged orthodox teachings works
by pagan authors that referred to Jesus, as well as works by
"heretical'
Christians. He also arranged for a fixed income to be allocated to
the
Church and installed the bishop of Rome in the Lateran Palaces Then,
in
A.D. 331 , he commissioned and financed new copies of the Bible. This constituted one of
the single most decisive factors in the entire history of Christianity, and provided Christian
orthodoxy the "adherents of the message' with an unparalleled opportunity.
In A.D. 303, a quarter of a century before, the pagan Emperor
Diocletian had undertaken to destroy all Christian writings that could
be found. As a result Christian documents especially in Rome all but
vanished. When
389
Constantine, commissioned new versions of these documents, it enabled
the custodians of orthodoxy to revise, edit and re-write their material
as they saw fit, in accordance with their tenets. It was at this point
that most of the crucial alterations in the New
Testament were probably made, and Jesus assumed the unique status he
has enjoyed ever since. The importance of Constantine's commission
must not be underestimated. Of the five thousand extant early
manuscript versions of the
New Testament, not one pre-dates the fourth century." The New Testament, as it exists
today, is essentially a product of fourth-century editors and writers custodians of
orthodoxy, "adherents of the message', with vested interests to protect.
The Zealots
After Constantine the course of Christian orthodoxy is familiar enough and well
documented. Needless to say it culminated in the final triumph of the "adherents of the
message'. But if "the message established itself as the guiding and governing principle of
Western civilisation, it did not remain wholly unchallenged. Even from its incognito exile,
the claims and the very existence of the family would seem to have exerted a powerful
appeal an appeal which, more often than was comfortable, posed a threat to the
orthodoxy of Rome.
Roman orthodoxy rests essentially on the books of the New Testament. But the New
Testament itself is only a selection of early Christian documents dating from the fourth
century. There are a great many other works that pre-date the New Testament in its
present form, some of which cast a significant, often controversial, new light on the
accepted accounts.
There are, for instance, the diverse books excluded from the Bible, which comprise the
compilation now known' as the Apocrypha. Some of the works in the Apocrypha are
admittedly late, dating from the sixth century. Other works, however, were already in
circulation as early as the second century, and may well have as great a claim to veracity
as the original Gospels themselves.
390
One such work is the Gospel of Peter, a copy of which was first
located in a valley of the upper Nile in 1 886, although it is mentioned
by the bishop of Antioch in A.D. 180. According to this "apocryphal'
Gospel, Joseph of Arimathea was a close friend of Pontius
Pilate which, if true, would increase the likelihood of a fraudulent
Crucifixion. The Gospel of Peter also reports that the tomb in which
Jesus was buried lay in a place called "the garden of Joseph'. And
Jesus's last words on the cross are particularly striking: "My power,
my power, why hast thou forsaken Me? 18
Another apocryphal work of interest is the Gospel of the Infancy of
Jesus
Christ, which dates from no later than the second century and possibly from before. In
this book Jesus is portrayed as a brilliant but eminently human child. All too human
perhaps for he is violent and unruly, prone to shocking displays of temper and a rather
irresponsible exercise of his powers. Indeed, on one occasion he strikes dead another
child who offends him. t1 similar fate is visited-upon an autocratic mentor. Such incidents
are undoubtedly spurious, but they, attest to the way in which, at the time, Jesus had to be
depicted if he were to attain divine status amongst his following.
In addition to Jesus's rather scandalous behaviour as a child, there is
one curious and perhaps significant fragment in the Gospel of the
Infancy. When
Jesus was circumcised, his foreskin was said to have been appropriated
by an unidentified old woman who preserved it in an alabaster box used
for oil of spikenard. And "This is that alabaster box which Mary the
sinner procured and poured forth the ointment out of it upon the head
and the feet of our Lord Jesus Christ."9
Here, then, as in the accepted Gospels, there is an anointing which is
obviously more than it appears to bean anointing tantamount to some
significant ritual. In this case, however, it is clear that the
anointing has been foreseen and prepared long in advance. And the
whole incident implies a connection albeit an obscure and convoluted
one between the
Magdalene and Jesus's family long before Jesus embarked on his mission at the age of
thirty. It is reasonable to assume that Jesus's parents would not have conferred his
foreskin on the first old woman to request it even if there were nothing unusual in so
apparently odd a request.
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The old woman must therefore be someone of consequence and/or someone
on intimate terms with Jesus's parents. Aad the Magdalene's subsequent possession of
the bizarre relic -or, at any rate, of its container suggests a connection between her and
the old woman. Again we seem to be confronted by the shadowy vestiges of something
that was more important than is now generally believed.
Certain passages in the books of the Apocrypha the flagrant excesses
of
Jesus's childhood, for example were undoubtedly embarrassing to later
orthodoxy. They would certainly be so to most Christians today. But
it must be remembered that the Apocrypha, like the accepted books of
the New
Testament, was composed by "adherents of the message', intent on
deifying
Jesus. The Apocrypha cannot therefore be expected to contain anything that might
seriously compromise the "message' which any mention of Jesus's political activity, still
more of his possible dynastic ambitions, manifestly would. For evidence on such
controversial matters as those, we were obliged to look elsewhere.
The Holy Land in Jesus's time contained a bewildering number of
diverse
Judaic groups, factions, sects and sub sects In the Gospels, only two
of these, the Pharisees and Sadducees, are cited, and both are cast in
the roles of villains. However, the role of villain would only have
been appropriate to the Sadducees, who did collaborate with the Roman
administration. The Pharisees maintained a staunch opposition to Rome;
and
Jesus himself, if not actually a Pharisee, acted essentially within
the
Pharisee tradition."
In order to appeal to a Romanised audience, the Gospels were obliged to
exonerate Rome and blacken the Jews. This explains why the Pharisees
had to be misrepresented and deliberately stigmatised along with their
genuinely culpable countrymen, the Sadducees. But why is there no
mention in the
Gospels of the Zealots the militant nationalistic "freedom fighters'
and revolutionaries who, if anything, a Roman audience would only too
eagerly have seen as villains? There would seem to be no explanation
for their apparent omission from the Gospels unless Jesus was so
closely associated with them that this association could not possibly
be disowned, only glossed over and thereby concealed. As Professor
Brandon argues: "The
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Gospels' silence about Zealots ... must surely be indicative of a
relationship between Jesus and these patrons which the Evangelists preferred not to
disclose.""
Whatever Jesus's possible association with the Zealots, there is no
question but that he was crucified as one. Indeed the two men
allegedly crucified with him are explicitly described as les tai the
appellation by which the Zealots were known to the Romans. It is
doubtful that Jesus himself was a Zealot. Nevertheless, he displays,
at odd moments in the
Gospels, an aggressive militarism quite comparable to theirs. In one
awkwardly famous passage, he announces that he has come "not to bring
peace, but a sword'. In Luke's Gospel, he instructs those of his
followers who do not possess a sword to purchase one (Luke 22:36); and
he himself then checks and approves that they are armed after the
Passover meal (Luke 22:38). In the Fourth Gospel Simon Peter is
actually carrying a sword when
Jesus is arrested. It is difficult to reconcile such references with the conventional image of
a mild pacifist saviour. Would such a saviour have sanctioned the bearing of arms,
particularly by one of his favourite disciples, the one on whom he supposedly founded his
church?
If Jesus was not himself a Zealot, the Gospels -seemingly despite
themselves betray and establish his connection with that militant
faction. There is persuasive evidence to associate Barabbas with
Jesus; and
Barabbas is also described as a les tai James, John and Simon Peter
all have appellations which may hint obliquely at Zealot sympathies, if
not
Zealot involvement. According to modern authorities, Judas Iscariot
derives from "Judas the Sicarii' and "Sicarii' was yet another term for
Zealot, interchangeable with les tai Indeed the Sicarii seem to have
been an elite within the Zealot ranks, a crack cadre of professional
assassins. Finally there is the disciple known as Simon. In the Greek
version of Mark, Simon is called Kananaios - a Greek transliteration of
the Aramaic word for
Zealot. In the King James Bible, the Greek word is mistranslated and
Simon appears as "Simon the Canaanite'. But the Gospel of Luke leaves
no room for doubt. Simon is clearly identified as a Zealot, and even
the King James
Bible introduces him as "Simon Zelotes'. It would thus seem fairly
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indisputable that Jesus numbered at least one Zealot among his
followers.
If the absence or, rather, apparent absence of the Zealots from the
Gospels is striking, so too is that of the Essenes. In the Holy Land
of
Jesus's time, the Essenes constituted a sect as important as the Pharisees and
Sadducees, and it is inconceivable that Jesus did not come into contact with them.
Indeed, from the account given of him, John the Baptist would seem to have been an
Essene. The omission of any reference to the Essenes seems to have been dictated by
the same considerations that dictated omission of virtually all references to the Zealots. In
short Jesus's connections with the Essenes, like his connections with the Zealots, were
probably too close and too well known to be denied. They could only be glossed over and
concealed.
From historians and chroniclers writing at the time, it is known that
the
Essenes maintained communities throughout the Holy Land and, quite possibly,
elsewhere as well. They began to appear around 150 B.C." and they used the Old
Testament, but interpreted it more as allegory than as literal historical truth. They
repudiated conventional Judaism in favour of a form of Gnostic dualism which seems to
have incorporated dements of sun worship and Pythagorean thought. They practised
healing and were esteemed for their expertise in therapeutic techniques. Finally they
were rigorously ascetic, and readily distinguished by their simple white garb.
Most modern authorities on the subject believe the famous Dead Sea
Scrolls found at Qumran to be essentially Essene documents. And there
is no question that the sect of ascetics living at Qumran had much in
common with
Essene thought. Like Essene teaching, the Dead Sea Scrolls reflect a
dualist theology. At the same time they lay a great stress on the
coming of a Messiah an "anointed one' descended from the line of
David." They also adhere to a special calendar, according to which the
Passover service was celebrated not on Friday, but on Wednesday which
agrees with the
Passover service in the Fourth Gospel. And in a number of significant
respects they coincide, almost word for word, with some of Jesus's
teaching. At the very least it would appear that Jesus was aware of
the
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Qumran community and, to some extent at any rate, brought his own
teachings into accord with theirs. One modern expert on the Dead Sea
Scrolls believes that they "give added ground for believing that many
incidents fin the New Testament] are merely projections into Jesus' own
history of what was expected of the Messiah' .13
Whether the Qumran sect were technically Essenes or not, it seems clear that Jesus even
if he did not undergo formal Essene training was well versed in Essene thought. Indeed,
many of his teachings echo those ascribed to the Essenes. And his aptitude for healing
likewise suggests some Essene influence. But a closer scrutiny of the Gospels reveals
that the Essenes may have figured even more significantly in Jesus's career.
The Essenes were readily identifiable by their white garments which,
paintings and cinema notwithstanding, were less common in the Holy Land
at the time than is generally believed. In the suppressed "secret'
Gospel of
Mark, a white linen robe plays an important ritual role -and it recurs later even in the
accepted authorised version. If Jesus was conducting mystery school initiations at
Bethany or elsewhere, the white linen robe suggests that these initiations may well have
been Essene in character.
What is more, the motif of the white linen robe recurs later in all
four
Gospels. After the Crucifixion Jesus's body "miraculously' disappears from the tomb
which is found to be occupied by at least one white-clad figure.
In Matthew it is an angel in "raiment white as snow' (28:3). In Mark it is "a young man in
long white garment' (1 6:5). Luke reports that there were "two men ... in shining garments'
(24:4), while the Fourth Gospel speaks of "two angels in white' (20:12). In two of these
accounts the figure or figures in the tomb are not even accorded any supernatural status.
Presumably, these figures are thoroughly mortal and yet, it would appear, unknown to the
disciples. It is certainly reasonable to suppose that they are Essenes. And given the
Essenes' aptitude for healing, such a supposition becomes even more tenable. If Jesus,
on being removed from the cross, was indeed still alive, the services of a healer would
clearly have been required. Even if he were dead, a healer is likely to have been present,
if only as a "forlorn hope'.
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And there were no more esteemed healers in the Holy Land at the time
than the Essenes.
According to our scenario a mock Crucifixion on private ground was arranged, with
Pilate's collusion, by certain of Jesus's supporters. More specifically it would have been
arranged not primarily by "adherents of the message', but by adherents to the bloodline
immediate family, in other words, and/or other aristocrats and/or members of an inner
circle. These individuals may well have had Essene connections or have been Essenes
themselves. To the "adherents of the message', however the "rank and file' of Jesus's
following, epitomised by Simon Peter the stratagem would not have been divulged.
On being carried to Joseph of Arimathea's tomb, Jesus would have required medical
attention, for which an Essene healer would have been present. And afterwards, when
the tomb was found to be vacant, an emissary would again have been necessary an
emissary unknown to the "rank and file' disciples.
This emissary would have had to reassure the unsuspecting "adherents of the message',
to act as intermediary between Jesus and his following and to forestall charges of grave-
robbing or grave desecration against the Romans, which might have provoked dangerous
civic disturbances.
Whether this scenario was accurate or not, it seemed to us fairly clear
that Jesus was as closely associated with the Essenes as he was with
the
Zealots. At first this might seem somewhat odd, for the Zealots and
the
Essenes are often imagined to have been incompatible. The Zealots were
aggressive, violent, militaristic, not averse to assassination and
terrorism. The Essenes, in contrast, are frequently depicted as
divorced from political issues, quietist, pacifist and gentle. In
actual fact, however, the Zealots included numerous Essenes in their
ranks for the
Zealots were not a sect but a political faction. As a political
faction they drew support not only from the anti Roman Pharisees, but
from the
Essenes as well who could be as aggressively nationalistic as anyone else.
The association of the Zealots and the Essenes is especially evident in
the writings of Josephus, from whom much of the available information
on
Palestine at the time derives. Joseph ben Matthias was born into the
Judaic nobility in A.D. 3 7. On the outbreak of the revolt in A.D. 66
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he was appointed governor of Galilee, where he assumed command of the
forces aligned against the Romans. As a military commander he seems to have proved
signally inept, and was promptly captured by the Roman Emperor Vesnasian.
Thereupon he turned Quisling. Taking the Romanised name of Flavius Josephus, he
became a Roman citizen, divorced his wife and married a Roman heiress, and accepted
lavish gifts from the Roman emperor -which included a private apartment in the imperial
palace, as well as land confiscated from Jews in the Holy Land. Around the time of his
death in A.D. 100, his copious chronicles of the period began to appear.
In The Jewish War Josephus offers a detailed account of the revolt
between
A.D. 66 and 74. Indeed, it was from Josephus that subsequent historians learned most
about that disastrous insurrection, the sack of Jerusalem and the razing of the Temple.
And Josephus's work also contains the only account of the fall, in A.D. 74, of the fortress
of Masada, situated at the south-western corner of the Dead Sea.
Like Montsegur some twelve hundred years later Masada has come to symbolise tenacity,
heroism and martyrdom in defence of a lost cause.
Like Montsegur it continued to resist the invader long after virtually
all other organised resistance had ceased. While the rest of Palestine
collapsed beneath the
Roman onslaught, Masada continued to be impregnable. At last, in A.D. 74, the position
of the fortress became untenable. After sustained bombardment with heavy siege
machinery, the Romans installed a ramp which put them into a position to breach the de
fences On the night of April 15th they prepared for a general assault. On that same night
the 960 men, women, and children within the fortress committed suicide en masse. When
the Romans burst through the gate the following morning, they found only corpses amid
the flames.
Josephus himself accompanied the Roman troops who entered the husk of
Masada on the morning of April 1 6th . He claims to have witnessed the
carnage personally. And he claims to have interviewed three survivors
of the debacle a woman and two children who supposedly hid in the
conduits beneath the fortress while the rest of the garrison killed
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themselves. From these survivors Josephus reports that he obtained a
detailed account of what had transpired the night before. According to
this account the commander of the garrison was a man named Eleazar a
variant, interestingly enough, of Lazarus. And it seems to have been
Eleazar who, by his persuasive and charismatic eloquence, led the
defenders to their grisly decision. In his chronicle Josephus
repeats
Eleazar's speeches, as he claims to have heard them from the survivors.
And these speeches are extremely interesting. History reports that
Masada was defended by militant Zealots. Josephus himself uses the
words "Zealots' and
"Sicarii' interchangeably. And yet Eleazar's speeches are not even
conventionally Judaic. On the contrary, they are unmistakably
Essene,
Gnostic and dualist:
Ever since primitive man began to think, the words of our ancestors and of the gods,
supported by the actions and spirit of our forefathers, have constantly impressed on us
that life is the calamity for man, not death.
Death gives freedom to our souls and lets them depart to their own pure home where they
will know nothing of any calamity; but while they are confined within a mortal body and
share its miseries, in strict truth they are dead.
For association of the divine with the mortal is most improper.
Certainly the soul can do a great deal even when imprisoned in the
body: it makes the body its own organ of sense, moving it invisibly and
impelling it in its actions further than mortal nature can reach. But
when, freed from the weight that drags it down to earth and is hung
about it, the soul returns to its own place, then in truth it partakes
of a blessed power and an utterly unfettered strength, remaining as
invisible to human eyes as God
Himself. Not even while it is in the body can it be viewed; it enters
undetected and departs unseen, having itself one imperishable nature,
but causing a change in the body; for whatever the soul touches lives
and blossoms, whatever it deserts withers and dies: such a
superabundance it has of immortality. 14
And again:
They are men of true courage who, regarding this life as a kind of
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service we must render to nature, undergo it with reluctance and
hasten to release their souls from their bodies; and though no
misfortune presses or drives them away, desire for immortal life impels
them to inform their friends that they are going to depart. "S
It is extraordinary that no scholar, to our knowledge, has ever
commented on these speeches before, for they raise a multitude of
provocative questions. At no point, for example, does orthodox Judaism
ever speak of a soul' still less of its "immortal' or "imperishable'
nature. Indeed, the very concept of a soul and of immortality is alien
to the mainstream of
Judaic tradition and thought. So, too, is the supremacy of spirit over matter, the union with
God in death, and the condemnation of life as evil.
These attitudes derive, quite unequivocally, from a mystery tradition. They are patently
Gnostic and dualist; and, in the context of Masada, are characteristically Essene.
Certain of these attitudes, of course, may also be described as in some
sense "Christian'. Not necessarily as that word subsequently came to
be defined, but as it might have been applied to Jesus's original
followers those, for example, who wished to join Lazarus in death in
the Fourth
Gospel. It is possible that the defenders of Masada included some
adherents to Jesus's bloodline. During the revolt of A.D. 66 to 74
there were numerous "Christians' who fought against the Romans as
vigorously as did the Jews. Many Zealots, in fact, were what would now
be called "early
Christians'; and it is quite likely that there were some of them at Masada.
Josephus, of course, suggests nothing of this sort -although even if he
once did, it would have been excised by subsequent editors. At the
same time, one would expect Josephus, writing a history of Palestine
during the first century, to make some mention of Jesus. Granted, many
later editions of Josephus's work do contain such references; but these
references conform to the Jesus of established orthodoxy, and most
modern scholars dismiss them as spurious interpolations dating from no
earlier than the time of
Constantine. In the nineteenth century, however, an edition of
Josephus was discovered in Russia which differed from all others. The
text itself, translated into Old Russian, dated from approximately
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1 261 . The man who transcribed it was not an orthodox Jew, because he
retained many 'pro-Christian' allusions. And yet
Jesus, in this version of Josephus, is described as human, as a political revolutionary and
as a "king who did not reign'. 16 He is also said to have had "a line in the middle of his
head in the manner of the Nazireans.""
Scholars have expended much paper and energy disputing the possible authenticity of
what is now called the "Slavonic Josephus'. All things considered, we were inclined to
regard it as more or less genuine a transcription from a copy or copies of Josephus which
survived the destruction of Christian documents by Diocletian and eluded the editorial zeal
of the reinstated orthodoxy under Constantine. There were a number of cogent reasons
for our conclusion. If the Slavonic Josephus was a forgery, for example, whose interests
would it have served? Its description of Jesus as a king would hardly have been
acceptable to a thirteenth-century Jewish audience. And its depiction of Jesus as human
would hardly have pleased thirteenth-century Christendom. What is more, Origen, a
Church father writing in the early third century, alludes to a version of Josephus which
denies Jesus's Messiahship:'8 This version which may once have been the original,
authentic and "standard' version could well have provided the text for the Slavonic
Josephus.
The Gnostic Writings
The revolt of A.D. 66-74 was followed by a second major insurrection
some sixty years later, between 132 and 135. As a result of this new
disturbance all Jews were officially expelled from Jerusalem, which
became a Roman city. But even as early as the first revolt history had
begun to draw a veil over events in the Holy Land, and there are
virtually no records for another two centuries. Indeed the period is
not dissimilar to Europe at various points during the so-called "Dark
Ages'. Nevertheless it is known that numerous Jews remained in the
country, though outside Jerusalem. So, too, did a number of
400
Christians. And there was even one sect of Jews, called the
Ebionites, who, while adhering generally to their faith, at the same time revered Jesus as
a prophet -albeit a mortal one.
Nevertheless the real spirit of both Judaism and Christianity moved
away from the Holy Land. The majority of Palestine's Jewish population
dispersed in a diaspora like that which had occurred some seven hundred
years before, when Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians. And
Christianity, in a similar fashion, began to migrate across the globe
to Asia Minor, to Greece, to
Rome, to Gaul, to Britain, to North Africa. Not surprisingly
conflicting accounts of what had happened in or around A.D. 33 began to
arise all over the civilised world. And despite the efforts of Clement
of Alexandria,
Irenaeus and their ilk, these accounts officially labelled 'heresies'
continued to flourish. Some of them undoubtedly derived from some sort
of first-hand knowledge, preserved both by devout Jews and by groups
like the
Ebionites, Jewish converts to one or another form of Christianity. Other accounts were
patently based on legend, on rumour, on an amalgamation of current beliefs such as
Egyptian, Hellenistic and Mithraic mystery traditions. Whatever their specific sources,
they caused much disquiet to the "adherents of the message', the coalescing orthodoxy
which was endeavouring to consolidate its position.
Information on the early "heresies' is meagre. Modern knowledge about
them derives largely from the attacks of their opponents, which
naturally makes for a distorted picture like the picture that might
emerge of the French
Resistance, for instance, from Gestapo documents. On the whole,
however,
Jesus seems to have been viewed by the early "heretics' in one of two ways.
For some he was a fully fledged god, with few, if any, human attributes.
For others he was a mortal prophet, not essentially different from, say, the Buddha or, half
a millennium later, Muhammad.
Among the most important of the early heresiarchs was Valentinus, a native of Alexandria
who spent the latter part of his life (A.D. 136-65) in Rome.
In his time Valentinus was extremely influential, numbering such men
as
Ptolemy among his following. Claiming to possess a body of "secret
teachings' of Jesus, he refused to submit to Roman authority, asserting
401
that personal gnosis took precedence over any external hierarchy. Predictably enough
Valentinus and his adherents were among the most be laboured targets of Irenaeus's
wrath.
Another such target was Marcion, a wealthy shipping magnate and bishop who arrived in
Rome around 140 and was excommunicated four years later. Marcion posited a radical
distinction between "law' and "love', which he associated with the Old and New
Testaments respectively; certain of these Marcionite ideas surfaced a full thousand years
later in such works as the Perlesvaus.
Marcion was the first writer to compile a canonical list of Biblical books which, in his case,
excluded the whole of the Old Testment. It was in direct response to Marcion that
Irenaeus compiled his canonical list, which provided the basis for the Bible as we know it
today.
The third major heresiarch of the period and in many ways the most
intriguing was Basilides, an Alexandrian scholar writing between nD.120
and 130. Basilides was conversant with both Hebrew scriptures and
Christian
Gospels. He was also steeped in Egyptian and Hellenistic thought. He
is supposed to have written no less than twenty-four commentaries on
the
Gospels. According to Irenaeus, he promulgated a most heinous heresy indeed.
Basilides claimed that the Crucifixion was a fraud, that Jesus did not die on the cross, and
that a substitute Simon of Cyrene took his place instead." Such an assertion would seem
to be bizarre. And yet it has proved to be extraordinarily persistent and tenacious. As late
as the seventh century-the Koran maintained precisely the same argument that a
substitute, traditionally Simon of Cyrene, took Jesus's place on the cross. z And the same
argument was upheld by the priest from whom we received the mysterious letter
discussed in Chapter 1 the letter that alluded to "incontrovertible proof of a substitution.
If there was any one region where the early heresies most entrenched
themselves, it was Egypt, and more specifically Alexandria most learned
and cosmopolitan city in the world at the time, the second largest city
in the Roman Empire and a repository for a bewildering variety of
faiths, teachings and traditions. In the wake of the two revolts in
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Judaea, Egypt proved the most accessible haven for both Jewish and
Christian refugees, vast numbers of whom thronged to
Alexandria. It was thus not surprising that Egypt yielded the most convincing evidence to
support our hypothesis. This was contained in the so-called "Gnostic Gospels', or, more
accurately, the Nag Hammadi Scrolls.
In December 1945 an Egyptian peasant, digging for soft and fertile soil near the village of
Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, exhumed a red earthenware jar. It proved to contain
thirteen codices papyrous books or scrolls -bound in leather. Unaware of the magnitude
of the discovery, the peasant and his family used some of the codices to stoke their fire.
Eventually, however, the remainder attracted the attention of experts; and one of them,
smuggled out of Egypt, was offered for sale on the black market. Part of this codex, which
was purchased by the C. G. Jung Foundation, proved to contain the now famous Gospel
of Thomas.
In the meantime the Egyptian government nationalised the remainder of
the
Nag Hammadi collection in 1952. Only in 1961, however, was an international team of
experts assembled to copy and translate the entire corpus of material. In 1972 the first
volume of the photographic edition appeared.
And in 1977 the entire collection of scrolls appeared in English translation for the first time.
The Nag Hammadi Scrolls are a collection of Biblical texts,
essentially
Gnostic in character, which date, it would appear, from the late fourth
or early fifth century -from about A.D. 400. The scrolls are copies,
and the originals from which they were transcribed date from much
earlier. Certain of them the Gospel of Thomas, for example, the Gospel
of Truth and the
Gospel of the Egyptians are mentioned by the very earliest of Church
fathers, such as Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus and Origen. Modern
scholars have established that some if not most of the texts in the
scrolls date from no later than A.D. 150. And at least one of them may
include material that is even older than the four standard Gospels of
the New
Testament, z'
Taken as a whole, the Nag Hammadi collection constitutes an invaluable
repository of early Christian documents some of which can claim an
authority equal to that of the Gospels. What is more, certain of these
403
documents enjoy a claim to a unique veracity of their own. In the
first place they escaped the censorship and revision of later Roman orthodoxy. In the
second place they were originally composed for an Egyptian, not a Roman, audience, and
are not therefore distorted or slanted to a Romanised ear.
Finally they may well rest on first-hand and/or eyewitness sources oral accounts by Jews
fleeing the Holy Land, for instance, perhaps even personal acquaintances or associates of
Jesus, who could tell their story with an historical fidelity the Gospels could not afford to
retain.
Not surprisingly the Nag Hammadi Scrolls contain a good many passages
that are inimical to orthodoxy and the "adherents of the message'. In
one undated codex, for example, the Second Treatise of the Great Seth,
-escaping his death on the cross by dint of an ingenious substitution.
In the following extract, Jesus speaks in the first person:
I did not succumb to them as they had planned .. . And I did not die in
reality but in appearance, lest I be put to shame by them .. . For my
death which they think happened [happened] to them in their error and
blindness, since they nailed their man unto their death .. . It was
another, their father, who drank the gall and the vinegar; it was not
I. They struck me with the reed; it was another, Simon, who bore the CfOSS On
his shoulder.
It was another upon whom they placed the crown of thorns ... And I was
laughing at their ignorance .22
With convincing consistency, certain other works in the Nag Hammadi
collection bear witness to a bitter and ongoing feud between Peter and
the
Magdalene a feud that would seem to reflect a schism between the
"adherents of the message' and the adherents to the bloodline. Thus,
in the
Gospel of Mary, Peter addresses the Magdalene as follows: "Sister, we
know that the Saviour loved you more than the rest of women. Tell us
the words of the Saviour which you remember which you know but we do
not. 123 Later
Peter demands indignantly of the other disciples: "Did he really speak
privately with a woman and not openly to us? Are we to turn about and
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all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?"Z4 And later still, one
of the disciples replies to
Peter: "Surely the Saviour knows her very well. That is why he loved her more than us."
In the Gospel of Philip the reasons for this feud would appear to be obvious enough.
There i's, for example, a recurring emphasis on the image of the bridal chamber.
According to the Gospel of Philip, "the Lord did everything in a mystery, a baptism and a
chrism and a eucharist and a redemption and a bridal chamber. 1213 Granted, the bridal
chamber, at first glance, might well seem to be symbolic or allegorical. But the Gospel of
Philip is more explicit: "There were three who always walked with the Lord; Mary his
mother and her sister and Magdalene, the one who was called his companion. 127
According to one scholar, the word "companion' is to be translated as 'spouse. 128 There
are certainly grounds for doing so, for the Gospel of Philip becomes more explicit still:
And the companion of the Saviour is Mary Magdalene. But Christ loved
her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her
mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed
disapproval. They said to him, "Why do you love her more than all of
us?" The Saviour answered and said to them, "Why do I not love you
like her ?1 29
The Gospel of Philip elaborates on the matter: "Fear not the flesh nor
love it. If you fear it, it will gain mastery over you. If you love
it, it will swallow and paralyse you. "3 At another point, this
elaboration is translated into concrete terms: "Great is the mystery of
marriage! For without it the world would not have existed. Now the
existence of the world depends on man, and the existence of man on
marriage."" And towards the end of the Gospel of Philip, there is the
following statement: "There is the Son of man and there is the son of
the Son of man. The Lord is the Son of man, and the son of the Son of
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man is he who is created through the Son of man. 14 The Grail
Dynasty
On the basis of the Nag Hammadi Scrolls alone, the possibility of a
bloodline descended directly from Jesus gained considerable
plausibility for us. Certain of the socalled "Gnostic Gospels' enjoyed
as great a claim to veracity as the books of the New
Testament. As a result the things to which they explicitly or
implicitly bore witness a substitute on the cross, a continuing dispute
between Peter and the Magdalene, a marriage between the
Magdalene and Jesus, the birth of a "son of the Son of Man' could not be dismissed out of
hand, however controversial they might be. We were dealing with history, not theology.
And history, in Jesus's time, was no less complex, mufti-faceted and oriented towards
practicalities than it is today.
The feud, in, the Nag Hammadi Scrolls, between Peter and the
Magdalene apparently testified to precisely the conflict we had
hypothesi sed the conflict between the "adherents of the message' and
the adherents to the bloodline. But it was the former who eventually
emerged triumphant to shape the course of
Western civilisation. Given their increasing monopoly of learning,
communication and documentation, there remained little evidence to
suggest that Jesus's family ever existed. And there was still less to
establish a link between that family and the
Merovingian dynasty.
Not that the "adherents of the message' had things entirely their own way. If the first two
centuries of Christian history were plagued by irrepressible heresies, the centuries that
followed were even more so. While orthodoxy consolidated itself theologically under
Irenaeus, politically under Constantine the heresies continued to proliferate on a hitherto
unprecedented scale.
406
However much they differed in theological details, most of the major
heresies shared certain crucial factors. Most of them were essentially Gnostic or Gnostic-
influenced, repudiating the hierarchical structure of Rome and extolling the supremacy of
personal illumination over blind faith. Most of them were also, in one sense or another,
dualist, regarding good and evil less as mundane ethical problems than as issues of
ultimately cosmic import. Finally most of them concurred in regarding Jesus as mortal,
born by a natural process of conception a prophet, divinely inspired perhaps but not
intrinsically divine, who died definitively on the cross or who never died on the cross at all.
In their emphasis on Jesus's humanity, many of the heresies referred
back to the august authority of
Saint Paul, who had spoken of "Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of
David according to the flesh' (Romans 1 :3).
Perhaps the most famous and profoundly radical of the heresies was
Manichaeanism essentially a fusion of Gnostic Christianity with skeins of earlier
Zoroastrian and Mithraic traditions. It was founded by an individual named Mani, who was
born near Baghdad in A.D. 214 to a family related to the Persian royal house. As a youth
Mani was introduced by his father into an unspecified mystical sect probably Gnostic
which emphasised asceticism and celibacy, practised baptism and wore white robes.
Around A.D. 240 Mani commenced to propagate his own teachings and,
like
Jesus, was renowned for his spiritual healing and exorcisms. His
followers proclaimed him "the new Jesus' and even credited him with a
virgin birth a prerequisite for deities at the time. He was also known
as "Saviour',
"Apostle', "Illuminator', "Lord', "Raiser of the Dead', "Pilot' and
"Helmsman'. The last two designations are especially suggestive, for
they are interchangeable with "Nautonnier', the official title assumed
by the
Grand Master of the Prieure de Sion.
According to later Arab historians Mani produced many books in which he claimed to
reveal secrets Jesus had mentioned only obscurely and obliquely.
He regarded Zarathustra, Buddha and Jesus as his forerunners and
declared that he, like them, had received essentially the same
enlightenment from the same source. His teachings consisted of a
Gnostic dualism wedded to an imposing and elaborate cosmological
407
408
darkness; and the most important battlefield for these two opposed
principles was the human soul. Like the later Cathars, Mani espoused
the doctrine of reincarnation. Like the
Cathars, too, he insisted on an initiate class, an "illuminated elect'. He referred to Jesus
as the "Son of the Widow' - a phrase subsequently appropriated by Freemasonry. At the
same time he declared Jesus to be mortal or, if divine at all, divine only in a symbolic or
metaphorical sense, by virtue of enlightenment. And Mani, like Basilides, maintained that
Jesus did not die on the cross, but was replaced by a substitute."
In A.D. 276, by order of the king, Mani was imprisoned, flayed to
death, skinned and decapitated; and, perhaps to preclude a
resurrection, his mutilated body was put on public display. His
teachings, however, only gained impetus from his martyrdom; and among
his later adherents, at least for a time, was Saint Augustine. With
extraordinary rapidity, Manichaeanism spread throughout the Christian
world. Despite ferocious endeavours to suppress it, it managed to
survive, to influence later thinkers and to persist up, to the present
day. In Spain and in the south of France
Manichaean schools' were particularly active. By the time of the
Crusades these schools had forged links with other Manichaean sects
from Italy and
Bulgaria. It now appears unlikely that the Cathars were an offshoot of
the
Bulgarian Bogomils. On the contrary, the most recent research suggests
that the Cathars arose from Manichaean schools long established in
France. In any case the Albigensian Crusade was essentially a crusade
against
Manichaeanism; and despite the most assiduous efforts of Rome, the
word
"Manichaean' has survived to become an accepted part of our language and vocabulary.
In addition to Manichaeanism, of course, there were numerous other
heresies. Of them all, it was the heresy of Arius which posed the most
dangerous threat to orthodox Christian doctrine during the first
thousand years of its history. Arius was a presbyter in Alexandria
around 318, and died in 335. His dispute with orthodoxy was quite
simple and rested on a single premise that Jesus was wholly mortal, was
in no sense divine, and in no sense anything other than an inspired
409
teacher. By positing a single omnipotent and supreme God a God who
did not incarnate in the flesh, and did not suffer humiliation and
death at the hands of his creation Arius effectively embedded
Christianity in an essentially Judaic framework. And he may well, as a
resident of Alexandria, have been influenced by Judaic teachings there
the teachings of the
Ebionites, for example. At the same time the supreme God of Arianism enjoyed immense
appeal in the West. As Christianity came to acquire increasingly secular power, such a
God became increasingly attractive.
Kings and potentates could identify with such a God more readily than they could with a
meek, passive deity who submitted without resistance to martyrdom and eschewed
contact with the world.
Although Arianism was condemned at the Council of Nicea in 325,
Constantine had always been sympathetic towards it, and became more so
at the end of his life. On his death, his son and successor,
Constantius, became unabashedly Arian; and under his auspices councils
were convened which drove orthodox Church leaders into exile. By 360
Arianism had all but displaced Roman Christianity. And though it was
officially condemned again in 381 , it continued to thrive and gain
adherents. When the Merovingians rose to power during the fifth
century, virtually every bishopric in
Christendom was either Arian or vacant.
Among the most fervent devotees of Arianism were the Goths, who had
been converted to it from paganism during the fourth century. The
Suevi, the
Lombards, the Alans, the Vandals, the Burgundians and the Ostrogoths
were all Arian. So were the Visigoths, who, when they sacked Rome in
480, spared
Christian churches. If the early Merovingians, prior to Clovis, were at all receptive to
Christianity, it would have been the Arian Christianity of their immediate neighbours, the
Visigoths and Burgundians.
Under Visigoth auspices, Arianism became the dominant form of Christianity in Spain, the
Pyrenees and what is now southern France.
If Jesus's family did indeed find refuge in Gaul, their overlords, by
the fifth century, would have been the Arian Visigoths. Under the
Arian regime, the family is not likely to have been persecuted. It
410
would probably have been highly esteemed and might well have
intermarried with Visigoth nobility before its subsequent intermarriage with the Franks to
produce the Merovingians.
And with Visigoth patronage and protection, it would have been secure against all threats
from Rome. It is thus not particularly surprising that unmistakably Semitic names Bera, for
instance occur among Visigoth aristocracy and royalty. Dagobert II married a Visigoth
princess whose father was named Bera. The name Bera recurs repeatedly in the Visigoth
Merovingian family tree descended from Dagobert II and Sigisbert IV.
The Roman Church is said to have declared that Dagobert's son had converted to
Arianism,z and it would not be very extraordinary if he had done so.
Despite the pact between the Church and Clovis, the Merovingians had always been
sympathetic to Arianism. One of Clovis's grandsons, Chilperic, made no secret of his
Arian proclivities.
If Arianism was not inimical to Judaism, neither was it to Islam, which
rose so meteorically in the seventh century. The Arian view of Jesus
was quite in accord with that of the Koran. In the Koran Jesus is
mentioned no less than thirty-five times, under a number of impressive
appellations including "Messenger of God' and "Messiah'. At no point,
however, is he regarded as anything other than a mortal prophet, a
forerunner of Muhammad and a spokesman for a single supreme God. And
like Basilides and Mani, the
Koran maintains that Jesus did not die on the cross, "they did not kill him, nor did they
crucify him, but they thought they did. "I The Koran itself does not elaborate on this
ambiguous statement, but Islamic commentators do. According to most of them, there
was a substitute generally, though not always, supposed to have been Simon of Cyrene.
Certain Muslim writers speak of Jesus hiding in a niche of a wall and watching the
Crucifixion of a surrogate which concurs with the fragment already quoted from the Nag
Hammadi Scrolls.
Judaism and the Merovingians
It is worth noting the tenacity, even in the face of the most vigorous
411
persecution, with which most of the heresies and especially Arianism
insisted on Jesus's mortality and humanity. But we found no indication that any of them
necessarily possessed any first-hand knowledge of the premise to which they so
persistently adhered. Still less was there any evidence, apart from the Nag Hammadi
Scrolls, to suggest their awareness of a possible bloodline. It was possible, of course, that
certain documents did exist documents akin to the Nag Hammadi Scrolls, perhaps even
genealogies and archives. The sheer virulence of Roman persecution might well suggest
a fear of such evidence and a desire to ensure that it would never see the light. But if that
was the case, Rome would appear to have succeeded.
The heresies, then, provided us with no decisive confirmation of a connection between
Jesus's family and the Merovingians, who appeared on the world stage some four
centuries later. For such confirmation we were obliged to look elsewhere back to the
Merovingians themselves. At first glance the evidence, such as it was, seemed to be
meagre. We had already considered the legendary birth of Merovee, for example child of
two fathers, one of whom was a mysterious aquatic creature from across the sea -and
guessed that this curious fable might have been intended simultaneously to reflect and
conceal a dynastic alliance or intermarriage.
But, while the fish symbolism was suggestive, it was hardly conclusive.
Similarly the subsequent pact between Clovis and the Roman Church made considerably
more sense in the light of our scenario; but the pact itself did not constitute concrete
evidence. And while the Merovingian royal blood was credited with a sacred, miraculous
and divine nature, it was not explicitly stated anywhere that this blood was in fact Jesus's.
In the absence of any decisive or conclusive testimony, we had to proceed cautiously. We
had to evaluate fragments of circumstantial evidence, and try to assemble these
fragments into a coherent picture.
And we had first to determine whether there were any uniquely Judaic
influences on the
Merovingians.
Certainly the Merovingian kings do not seem to have been anti-Semitic.
On the contrary they seem to have been not merely tolerant, but
downright sympathetic to the Jews in their domains and this despite the
412
assiduous protests of the Roman Church. Mixed marriages were a
frequent occurrence.
Many Jews, especially in the south, possessed large landed estates. Many of them
owned Christian slaves and servants. And many of them acted as magistrates and high-
ranking administrators for their Merovingian lords. On the whole the Merovingian attitude
towards Judaism seems to have been without parallel in Western history prior to the
Lutheran Reformation.
The Merovingians themselves believed their miraculous power to be vested, in large part,
in their hair, which they were forbidden to cut.
Their position on this matter was identical to that of the Nazorites in
the Old
Testament, of whom Samson was a member. There is much evidence to suggest that
Jesus was also a Nazorite. According to both early Church writers and modern scholars
his brother, Saint James, indisputably was.
In the Merovingian royal house, and in the families connected with it,
there were a surprising number of specifically Judaic names. Thus, in
577, a brother of King Clotaire II was named Samson. Subsequently one
Miron 'le
Levite' was count of Besalou and bishop of Gerona. One count of Roussillon was named
Solomon, and another Solomon became king of Brittany. There was an Abbot Elisachar -
a variant of "Eleazar' and "Lazarus'. And the very name "Merovee' would seem to be of
Middle Eastern derivation."
Judaic names became increasingly prominent through dynastic marriages
between the Merovingians and the Visigoths. Such names figure in
Visigoth nobility and royalty; and it is possible that many so-called
"Visigoth' families were in fact Judaic. This possibility gains
further credence from the fact that chroniclers would frequently use
the words "Goth' and "Jew' interchangeably. The south of France and
the Spanish marches the region known as Septimania in Merovingian and
Carolingian times contained an extremely large Jewish population. This
region was also known as "Gothic' or "Gothic', and its Jewish
inhabitants were thus often called "Goths' an error which may, on
occasion, have been deliberate. By dint of this error,
Jews could not be identified as such, save perhaps by specific family names. Thus
Dagobert's father-inlaw was named Bera, a Semitic name.
And
413
Bera's sister was married to a member of a family named Levy.S
Granted, names and a mystical attitude towards one's hair were not
necessarily a solid basis on which to establish a connection between
the
Merovingians and Judaism. But there was another fragment of evidence
which was somewhat more persuasive. The Merovingians were the royal
dynasty of the Franks a Teutonic tribe which adhered to Teutonic tribal
law. In the late fifth century this law, codified and couched in a
Roman framework, became known as Salic Law. In its origins, however,
Salic Law was ultimately Teutonic tribal law and predated the advent of
Roman
Christianity in Western Europe. During the centuries that followed it
continued to stand in opposition to the ecclesiastical law promulgated
by
Rome. Throughout the Middle Ages it was the official secular law of
the
Holy Roman Empire. As late as the Lutheran Reformation the German peasantry and
knighthood included, in their grievances against the Church, the latter's disregard for
traditional Salic law.
There is one entire section of the Salic Law Title 45, "De Migrantibus'
which has consistently puzzled scholars and commentators, and been the
source of incessant legal debate. It is a complicated section of
stipulations and clauses pertaining to circumstances whereby itinerants
may establish residence and be accorded citizenship. What is curious
about it is that it is not Teutonic in origin, and writers have been
driven to postulate bizarre hypotheses to account for its inclusion in
the Salic
Code. Only recently, however, it has been discovered that this section
of the Salic Code derives directly from Judaic Laws More specifically,
it can be traced back to a section in the Talmud. It can thus be said
that Salic
Law, at least in part, issues directly from traditional Judaic law.
And this in turn suggests that the Merovingians under whose auspices
Salic
Law was codified were not only versed in Judaic law, but had access
to
Judaic texts.
The Principality in Septimania
Such fragments were provocative, but they provided only tenuous support
for our hypothesis that a bloodline descended from Jesus existed in the
414
south of France, that this bloodline intermarried with the
Merovingians and that the Merovingians, in consequence, were partly Judaic. But while
the Merovingian epoch failed to provide us with any conclusive evidence for our
hypothesis, the epoch which immediately followed it did. By means of this "retroactive
evidence' our hypothesis suddenly became tenable.
We had already explored the possibility of the Merovingian bloodline
surviving after being deposed from its thrones by the Carolingians. In
the process we had encountered an autonomous principality that existed
in the south of France for a century and a half a principality whose
most famous ruler was Guillem de Gellone. Guillem was one of the most
revered heroes of his age. He was also the protagonist of the
Willehalm by Wolfram von
Eschenbach, and is said to have been associated with the Grail family. It was in Guillem
and his background that we found some of our most surprising and exciting evidence.
At the apex of his power Guillem de Gellone included among his domains north-eastern
Spain, the Pyrenees and the region of southern France known as Septimania. This area
had long contained a large Jewish population.
During the sixth and seventh centuries this population had enjoyed
extremely cordial relations with its Visigoth overlords, who espoused
Arian
Christianity so much so, in fact, that mixed marriages were common, and the words "Goth'
and "Jew' were often used interchangeably.
By 71 1 , however, the situation of the Jews in Septimania and
north-eastern
Spain had sadly deteriorated. By that time Dagobert II had been
assassinated and his lineage driven into hiding in the Razes the region
including and surrounding Rennes-leChateau. And while collateral
branches of the Merovingian bloodline still nominally occupied the
throne to the north, the only real power resided in the hands of the
so-called Mayors of the Palace the Carolingian usurpers who, with the
sanction and support of
Rome, set about establishing their own dynasty. By that time, too,
the
Visigoths had themselves converted to Roman Christianity and begun to persecute the
Jews in their domains. Thus, when Visigoth Spain was overrun by the Moors in 71 1 , the
Jews eagerly welcomed the invaders.
415
Under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a thriving existence. The
Moors were gracious to them, often placing them in administrative charge of captured
cities like Cordoba, Granada and Toledo.
Jewish commerce and trade were encouraged and attained a new prosperity.
Judaic thought coexisted, side by side, with that of Islam, and the two cross-fertilised each
other. And many towns -including Cordoba, the Moorish capital of Spain were
predominantly Jewish in population.
At the beginning of the eighth century the Moors crossed the Pyrenees
into
Septimania; and from 720 until 759 while Dagobert's grandson and
great-grandson continued their clandestine existence in the Razes
-Septimania was in Islamic hands. Septimania became an autonomous Moorish
principality, with its own capital at Narbonne and owing only nominal allegiance
to the emir of Cordoba. And from Narbonne the Moors of
Septimania began to strike northwards, capturing cities as deep into
Frankish territory as Lyons.
The Moorish advance was checked by Charles Martel, Mayor of the Palace
and grandfather of Charlemagne. By 738 Charles had driven the Moors
Narbonne, to which he then laid siege. Narbonne, however defended by
both
Moors and Jews proved impregnable, and Charles vented his frustration by devastating
the surrounding countryside.
By 752 Charles's son, Pepin, had formed alliances with local aristocrats, thereby bringing
Septimania fully under his control. Narbonne, however, continued to resist, withstanding a
seven-year-long siege by Pepin's forces. The city was a painful thorn in Pepin's side, at a
time when it was most urgent for him to consolidate his position.
He and his successors were acutely sensitive to charges of having
usurped the Merovingian throne. To establish a claim to legitimacy, he
forged dynastic alliances with surviving families of the Merovingian
royal blood. To further validate his status he arranged for his
coronation to be distinguished by the Biblical rite of anointing
-whereby the Church assumed the prerogative of creating kings. But there was
another aspect to the ritual of anointing as well.
According to scholars, anointing was a deliberate attempt to suggest
that the Frankish monarchy was a replica, if not actually a
continuation, of the
416
Judaic monarchy in the Old Testament. This, in itself, is extremely
interesting. For why would Pepin the usurper want to legitimi se himself by means of a
Biblical prototype? Unless the dynasty he deposed the Merovingian dynasty had legitimi
sed itself by precisely the same means.
In any case Pepin was confronted by two problems the tenacious
resistance of Narbonne, and the matter of establishing his own
legitimate claim to the throne by referring to Biblical precedent. As
Professor Arthur Zuckerman of
Columbia University has demonstrated, he resolved both problems by a pact in 759 with
Narbonne's Jewish population. According to this pact, Pepin would receive Jewish
endorsement for his claim to a Biblical succession. He would also receive Jewish aid
against the Moors. In return he would grant the Jews of Septimania a principality, and a
king, of their own."
In 759 the Jewish population of Narbonne turned suddenly upon the
city's
Muslim defenders, slaughtered them and opened the gates of the fortress
to the besieging Franks. Shortly thereafter, the Jews acknowledged
Pepin as their nominal overlord and validated his claim to a legitimate
Biblical succession. Pepin, in the meantime, kept his part of the
bargain. In 768 a principality was created in Septimania - a Jewish
principality which paid nominal allegiance to Pepin but was essentially
independent. A ruler was officially installed as king of the Jews. In
the romances he is called
Aymery. According to existing records, however, he seems, on being
received into the, ranks of Frankish nobility, to have taken the name
Theodoric or
Thierry. Theodoric, or Thierry, was the father of Guillem de Gellone.
And he was recognised by both Pepin and the caliph of Baghdad, as "the
seed of the royal house of David. "I
As we had already discovered, modern scholars were uncertain about
Theodoric's origins and background. According to most researchers he
was of
Merovingian descent.9 According to Arthur Zuckerman he is said to have
been a native of Baghdad an "exffarch', descended from Jews who had
lived in
Babylon since the Babylonian Captivity. It is also possible, however,
that the "exilarch' from Baghdad was not Theodoric. It is possible
that the "exilarch' came from Baghdad to consecrate Theodoric, and
417
subsequent records confused the two. Professor Zuckerman mentions a
curious assertion that the "Western exilarchs' were of "purer blood' than those in the East."
Who were the "Western exilarchs', if not the Merovingians? Why would an individual of
Merovingian descent be acknowledged as king of the Jews, ruler of a Jewish principality
and "seed of the royal house of David', unless the Merovingians were indeed partly
Judaic? Following the Church's collusion in Dagobert's assassination and its betrayal of
the pact ratified with Clovis, the surviving Merovingians may well have repudiated all
allegiance to Rome and returned to what was their former faith. Their ties to that faith
would, in any case, have been strengthened by Dagobert's marriage to the daughter of an
ostensibly "Visigoth' prince with the patently Semitic name of Bera.
Theodoric, or Thierry, further consolidated his position, and Pepin's
as well, by an expeditious marriage to the latter's sister Alda, the
aunt of
Charlemagne. In the years that followed the Jewish kingdom of Septimania enjoyed a
prosperous existence. It was richly endowed with estates held in freehold from the
Carolingian monarchs. It was even granted sizeable tracts of Church land despite the
vigorous protests of Pope Stephen III and his successors.
The son of Theodoric, king of the Jews of Septimania, was Guillem de
Gellone, whose titles included count of Barcelona, of Toulouse, of
Auvergne and of Razes. Like his father Guillem was not only
Merovingian, but also a Jew of royal blood. Royal blood acknowledged
by the Carolingians, by the caliph and, albeit grudgingly, by the pope
to be that of the House of
David.
Despite subsequent attempts to conceal it, modern scholarship and
research have proved Guillem's Judaism beyond dispute. Even in the
romances where he figures as Guillaume, Prince of Orange he is fluent
in both Hebrew and
Arabic. The device on his shield is the same as that of the Eastern "exilarchs' the Lion of
Judah, the tribe to which the house of David, and subsequently Jesus, belonged. He is
nicknamed "Hook-Nose'. And even amidst his campaigns, he takes pains to observe the
Sabbath and the Judaic Feast of the Tabernacles. As Arthur Zuckerman remarks:
418
The chronicler who wrote the original report of the siege and fall
of
Barcelona recorded events according to the Jewish calendar .. . [The] commander of the
expedition, Duke William of Narbonne and Toulouse conducted the action with strict
observance of Jewish Sabbaths and holy Days. In all of this, he enjoyed the full
understanding and co-operation of King Louis."
Guillem de Gellone became one of the so-called "Peers of Charlemagne'
an authentic historical hero who, in the popular mind and tradition,
ranked with such legendary figures as Roland and Olivier. When
Charlemagne's son,
Louis, was invested as emperor, it was Guillem who placed the crown on his head. Louis
is reported to have said. "Lord William .. . it is your lineage that has raised up mine." It is
an extraordinary statement, given that it is addressed to a man whose lineage so far as
later historians are concerned would seem to be utterly obscure.
At the same time Guillem was more than a warrior. Shortly before 792
he established an academy at Gellone, importing scholars and creating a
renowned library; and Gellone soon became an esteemed centre of Judaic
studies. It is from just such an academy that the "heathen' Flegetanis
might have issued the Hebrew scholar descended from Solomon, who,
according to Wolfram, confided the secret of the Holy Grail to Kyot
of
Provence.
In 806 Guillem withdrew from active life, secluding himself in his academy.
Here, around 812, he died, and the academy was later converted into a monastery, the
now famous Saint-Guilhelm-le-Deseri."3 Even before Guillem's death, however, Gellone
had become one of the first known seats in Europe for the cult of the Magdalene 14 _
which, significantly enough, flourished there concurrently with the Judaic academy.
Jesus was of the Tribe of Judah and the royal house of David. The
Magdalene is said to have carried the Grail -the Sangraal or "royal
blood' into
France. And in the eighth century there was, in the south of France, a
potentate of the Tribe of Judah and the royal house of David, who was
acknowledged as king of the Jews. He was not only a practising Jew,
419
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420
Merovingian. And through Wolfram von Eschenbach's poem, he and his
family are associated with the Holy Grail.
The Seed of David
In later centuries assiduous attempts seem to have been made to expunge
from the records all trace of the Jewish Kingdom of Septimania. The
frequent confusion of "Goths' and "Jews' seems indicative of this
censorship. But the censorship could not hope to be entirely
successful. As late as 1 143 Peter the Venerable of Cluny, in an
address to Louis VII of France, condemned the
Jews of Narbonne, who claimed to have a king residing among them. In
Cambridge monk, one Theobald, speaks of 'the chief Princes and Rabbis
of the
Jews who dwell in Spain land] assemble together at Narbonne where the
royal seed resides." And in 1 165-6 Benjamin of Tudela, a famous
traveller and chronicler, reports that in Narbonne there are "sages,
magnates and princes at the head of whom is ... a descendant of the
House of David as stated in his family tree. '16
But any seed of David residing in Narbonne by the twelfth century was
of less consequence than certain other seed living elsewhere. Family
trees bifurcate, spread, subdivide and produce veritable forests. If
certain descendants of Theodoric and Guillem de Gellone remained in
attained more august domains. By the twelfth century these domains
included the most illustrious in Christendom Lorraine and the Frankish
kingdom of
Jerusalem.
In the ninth century the bloodline of Guillem de Gellone had culminated in the first dukes
of Aquitaine. It also became aligned with the ducal house of Brittany. And in the tenth
century a certain Hugues de Plantard -nicknamed "Long Nose' and a lineal descendant of
both Dagobert and Guillem de Gellone became the father of Eustache, first Count of
Boulogne.
Eustache's grandson was Godfroi de Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine and
conqueror of Jerusalem. And from Godfroi there issued a dynasty and
a'royal tradition' which, by virtue of being founded on "the rock of
421
Sion', was equal to those presiding over France, England and Germany. If the
Merovingians were indeed descended from Jesus, then Godfroi scion of the Merovingian
blood royal had, in his conquest of Jerusalem, regained his rightful heritage.
Godfroi and the subsequent house of Lorraine were, of course,
nominally
Catholic. To survive in a now Christianised world, they would have had
to be. But their origins seem to have been known about in certain
quarters at least. As late as the sixteenth century it is reported
that Henri de
Lorraine, Duke of Guise, on entering the town of Joinville in
Champagne, was received by exuberant crowds. Among them, certain
individuals are recorded to have chanted "Hosannah filio David'
("Hosannah to the Son of
David').
It is not perhaps insignificant that this incident is recounted in a modern history of Lorraine,
printed in 1966. The work contains a special introduction by Otto von Habsburg who
today is titular Duke of Lorraine and King of Jerusalem."
Fig. 3 The Coat of Arms of Fig 4 The Official Device of
Rennes-leChateauthe Prieure de Sion
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25 Conclusion and Portents for the Future
But if, for instance the statement that Christ rose from the dead is to
be understood not literally but symbolically, then it is capable of
various interpretations that do not conflict with knowledge and do not
impair the meaning of the statement. The objection that understanding
it symbolically puts an end to the Christian's hope of immortality is
invalid, because long before the coming of Christianity mankind
believed in a life after death and therefore had no need of the Easter
event as a guarantee of immortality. The danger that a mythology
understood too literally, and as taught by the
Church will suddenly be repudiated lock, stock and barrel is today greater than ever. Is it
not time that the Christian mythology, instead of being wiped out, was understood
symbolically for once?
Carl Jung, "The Undiscovered Self, Collected Works, vol. 10 (1956) p.
266.
We had not, in the beginning, set out to prove or disprove anything, least of all the
conclusion to which we had been ineluctably led. We had certainly not set out to
challenge some of the most basic tenets of Christianity. On the contrary, we had begun
by investigating a specific mystery. We were looking for answers to certain perplexing
questions, explanations for certain historical enigmas. In the process we more or less
stumbled upon something rather greater than we had initially bargained for. We were led
to a startling, controversial and seemingly preposterous conclusion.
This conclusion compelled us to turn our attention to the life of Jesus and the origins of the
religion founded upon him. When we did so, we wePe still not attempting to challenge
Christianity. We were simply endeavouring to ascertain whether or not our conclusion
was tenable.
423
An exhaustive consideration of Biblical material convinced us that it
was.
Indeed we became convinced that our conclusion was not only tenable, but extremely
probable.
We could not and still cannot prove the accuracy of our conclusion. It remains, to some
extent at least, an hypothesis. But it is a plausible hypothesis, which makes coherent
sense. It explains a great deal. And, so far as we are concerned, it constitutes a more
historically likely account than any we have encountered of the events and personages
which, two thousand years ago, imprinted themselves on Western consciousness and, in
the centuries that followed, shaped our culture and civilisation.
If we cannot prove our conclusion, however, we have received abundant
evidence from both their documents and their representatives that the
Prieure de Sion can. On the basis of their written hints and their personal conversation
with us, we are prepared to believe that Sion does possess something something which
does in some way amount to "incontrovertible proof of the hypothesis we have advanced.
We do not know precisely what this proof might be. We can, however, make an educated
guess.
If our hypothesis is correct, Jesus's wife and offspring (and he could have fathered a
number of children between the ages of sixteen or seventeen and his supposed death),
after fleeing the Holy Land, found a refuge in the south of France, and in a Jewish
community there preserved their lineage.
During the fifth century this lineage appears to have intermarried with the royal line of the
Franks, thus engendering the Merovingian dynasty. In A.D. 496 the Church made a pact
with this dynasty, pledging itself in perpetuity to the Merovingian bloodline presumably in
the full knowledge of that bloodline's true identity. This would explain why Clovis was
offered the status of Holy Roman Emperor, of "new Constantine', and why he was not
created king, but only recognised as such.
When the Church colluded in Dagobert's assassination, and the
subsequent betrayal of the Merovingian bloodline, it rendered itself
guilty of a crime that could neither be rationalised nor expunged. It
could only be suppressed. It would have had to be suppressed for a
disclosure of the
Merovingians' real identity would hardly have strengthened Rome's
424
position against her enemies. Despite all efforts to eradicate it,
Jesus's bloodline or, at any rate, the Merovingian bloodline survived.
It survived in part through the
Carolingians, who clearly felt more guilty about their usurpation than
did
Rome, and sought to legitimi se themselves by dynastic alliances with
Merovingian princesses. But more significantly it survived through
Dagobert's son, Sigisbert, whose descendants included Guillem de
Gellone, ruler of the Jewish kingdom of Septimania, and eventually
Godfroi de
Bouillon. With Godfroi's capture of Jerusalem in 1099, Jesus's lineage would have
regained its rightful heritage the heritage conferred upon it in Old Testament times.
It is doubtful that Godfroi's true pedigree during the time of the
Crusades was as secret as Rome would have wished it to be. Given the
Church's hegemony, there could not, of course, have been an overt
disclosure. But it is probable that rumours, traditions and legends
were rife; and these would seem to have found their most prominent
expression in such tales as that of
Lohengrin, for example, Godfroi's mythical ancestor and, naturally, in the romances of the
Holy Grail.
If our hypothesis is correct, the Holy Grail would have been at least
two things simultaneously. On the one hand it would have been Jesus's
bloodline and descendants -the "Sang Raal', the "Real' or "Royal' blood
of which the
Templars, created by the Prieure de Sion, were appointed guardians. At
the same time the Holy Grail would have been, quite literally, the
receptacle, or vessel, which received and contained Jesus's blood. In
other words it would have been the womb of the Magdalene and, by
extension, the
Magdalene herself. From this the cult of the Magdalene, as it was promulgated during the
Middle Ages, would have arisen and been confused with the cult of the Virgin. It can be
proved, for instance, that many of the famous "Black Virgins' or "Black Madonnas' early in
the Christian era were shrines not to the Virgin but to the Magdalene and they depict a
mother and child. It has also been argued that the Gothic cathedrals those majestic stone
replicas of the womb dedicated to "Notre Dame' were also, as Le Serpent rouge states,
shrines to Jesus's consort, rather than to his mother.
The Holy Grail, then, would have symbolised both Jesus's bloodline and
the
425
Magdalene, from whose womb that bloodline issued. But it may have
been something else as well. In A.D. 70, during the great revolt in
Judaea, Roman legions under Titus sacked the
Temple of Jerusalem. The pillaged treasure of the Temple is said to
have found its way eventually to the Pyrenees; and M. Plantard, in his
conversation with us, stated that this treasure was in the hands of
the
Prieure de Sion today. But the Temple of Jerusalem may have contained more than the
treasure plundered by Titus's centurions. In ancient Judaism religion and politics were
inseparable. The Messiah was to be a priest-king, whose authority encompassed spiritual
and secular domains alike. It is thus likely, indeed probable, that the Temple housed
official records pertaining to Israel's royal line the equivalents of the birth certificates,
marriage licences and other relevant data concerning any modern royal or aristocratic
family. If Jesus was indeed "King of the Jews' the Temple is almost certain to have
contained copious information relating to him. It may even have contained his body or at
least his tomb, once his body was removed from the temporary tomb of the Gospels.
There is no indication that Titus, when he plundered the Temple in A.D. 70, obtained
anything in any way relevant to Jesus. Such material, if it existed, might of course have
been destroyed. On the other hand it might also have been hidden; and Titus's soldiers,
interested only in booty, might not have bothered to look for it. For any priest in the
Temple at the time, there would have been one obvious course of action. Seeing a
phalanx of centurions advancing upon him, he would have left them the gold, the jewels,
the material treasure they expected to find. And he would have hidden, perhaps beneath
the Temple, the items that were of greater consequence items relating to the rightful king
of Israel, the acknowledged Messiah and the royal family.
By 1100 Jesus's descendants would have risen to prominence in Europe
and, through Godfroi de Bouillon, in Palestine as well. They
themselves would have known their pedigree and ancestry. But they
might not have been able to prove their identity to the world at large;
and such proof may well have been deemed necessary for their subsequent
designs. If it were known that such proof existed, or even possibly
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existed, in the precincts of the Temple, no effort would have been
spared to find it. This would explain the role of the Knights Templar who, under a cloak of
secrecy, undertook excavations beneath the Temple, in the so-called Stables of Solomon.
On the basis of the evidence we examined, there would seem to be little question that the
Knights Templar were in fact sent to the Holy Land with the express purpose of finding or
obtaining something. And on the basis of the evidence we examined, they would seem to
have accomplished their mission.
They would seem to have found what they were sent to find, and to have brought it back
to Europe. What became of it then remains a mystery.
But there seems little question that, under the auspices of Bertrand de
Blanchefort, fourth Grand Master of the Order of the Temple, something
was concealed in the vicinity of Rennes-leChateau for which a
contingent of
German miners was imported, under the most stringent security, to excavate and
construct a hiding-place. One can only speculate about what might have been concealed
there. It may have been Jesus's mummified body. It may have been the equivalent, so to
speak, of Jesus's marriage licence, and/or the birth certificates of his children. It may
have been something of comparably explosive import. Any or all of these items might
have been referred to as the Holy Grail. Any or all of these items might, by accident or
design, have passed to the Cathar heretics and comprised part of the mysterious treasure
of Montsegur.
Through Godfroi and Baudouin de Bouillon, a "royal tradition' is said
to have existed which, because it was "founded on the Rock of Sion',
equalled in status the foremost dynasties of Europe. If as the New
Testament and later Freemasonry maintain the "Rock of Sion' is synonymous with Jesus,
that assertion would suddenly make sense. Indeed it would be, if anything, an
understatement.
Once installed on the throne of the kingdom of Jerusalem, the Merovingian dynasty could
sanction and even encourage hints about its true ancestry.
This would explain why the Grail romances appeared precisely when and
where they did, and why they were so explicitly associated with the
Knights
Templar. In time, once its position in Palestine was consolidated, the
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"royal tradition' descended from Godfroi and Baudouin would probably
have divulged its origins. The king of Jerusalem would then have taken
precedence over all the monarchs of Europe, and the patriarch of
Jerusalem would have supplanted the pope. Displacing Rome, Jerusalem
would then have become the true capital of Christendom, and perhaps of
much more than Christendom. For if Jesus were acknowledged as a mortal
prophet, as a priest-king and legitimate ruler of the line of David, he
might well have become acceptable to both Muslims and Jews. As king of
Jerusalem, his lineal descendant would then have been in a position to
implement one of the primary tenets of Templar policy the
reconciliation of Christianity with
Judaism and Islam.
Historical circumstances, of course, never allowed matters to reach this point. The
Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem never consolidated its position.
Beleaguered on every side by Muslim armies, unstable in its own
government and administration, it never attained the strength and
internal security it needed to survive still less to assert its
supremacy over the crowns of
Europe and the Church of Rome. The grandiose design foundered; and with the loss of
the Holy Land in 1291 it collapsed completely. The Merovingians were once again without
a crown. And the Knights Templar were not only redundant but also expendable.
In the centuries that followed, the Merovingians aided and/or directed and/or protected by
the Prieure de Sion -made repeated attempts to regain their heritage, but these attempts
were confined to Europe.
They seem to have involved at least three interrelated but essentially
distinct programmes. One was the creation of a psychological
atmosphere, a clandestine tradition intended to erode the spiritual
esoteric thought, in the
Rosicrucian manifestos and similar writings, in certain rites of
Freemasonry and, of course, in the symbols of Arcadia and the
underground stream. A second programme entailed political machination,
intrigue and, if feasible, an overt seizure of power the techniques
employed by the Guise and Lorraine families in the sixteenth century,
and by the architects of the Fronde in the seventeenth. A third
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programme by which the Merovingians sought to regain their heritage
was dynastic intermarriage.
On first consideration it might seem that such Byzantine procedures would have been
unnecessary; it might seem that the Merovingians if they were indeed descended from
Jesus would have had no trouble establishing their supremacy. They needed only to
disclose and establish their real identity, and the world would acknowledge them.
In fact, however, things would not have been so simple. Jesus himself
was not recognised by the Romans. When it was expedient to do so, the
Church had no compunction in sanctioning the murder of Dagobert and the
overthrow of his bloodline. A premature disclosure of their pedigree
would not have guaranteed success for the
Merovingians. On the contrary, it would have been much more likely to misfire to
engender factional strife, precipitate a crisis in faith, and provoke challenges from both the
Church and other secular potentates.
Unless they were well entrenched in positions of power, the Merovingians could not have
withstood such repercussions and the secret of their identity, their trump card, as it were,
would have been played and lost for ever. Given the realities of both history and politics,
this trump card could not have been used as a stepping stone to power. It could only be
played when power had already been acquired played, in other words, from a position of
strength.
In order to re-establish themselves, therefore, the Merovingians were
obliged to resort to more conventional procedures the accepted
procedures of the particular age in question. On at least four
occasions these procedures came frustratingly close to success, and
were thwarted only by miscalculation, by force of circumstance or by
the totally unforeseen. In the sixteenth century, for example, the
house of Guise very nearly managed to seize the French throne. In the
seventeenth century the Fronde very nearly succeeded in keeping Louis
XIV from the throne and supplanting him with a representative of the
house of Lorraine. In the late nineteenth century blueprints were laid
for a species of revived Holy League, which would have unified Catholic
Europe Austria, France, Italy and Spain under the Habsburgs. These
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plans were thwarted by the erratic and aggressive behaviour of both
Germany and Russia who provoked a constant shift of alliances among the major powers
and eventually precipitated a war which toppled all the continental dynasties.
It was in the eighteenth century, however, that the Merovingian bloodline probably came
closest to the realisation of its objectives.
By virtue of its intermarriage with the Habsburgs, the house of
Lorraine had actually acquired the throne of Austria, the Holy Roman
Empire. When Marie
Antoinette, daughter of Frano~ois de Lorraine, became queen of France
the throne of France, too, was only a generation or so away. Had not
the French
Revolution intervened, the house of Habsburg-Lorraine might well, by the early 1800s,
have been on its way to establishing dominion over all Europe.
It would seem clear that the French Revolution was a devastating blow
to
Merovingian hopes and aspirations. In a single shattering cataclysm, the carefully laid
and implemented designs of a century and a half were suddenly reduced to rubble. From
references in the "Prieure documents', moreover, it would seem that Sion, during the
turmoil of the Revolution, lost many of its most precious records and possibly other items
as well.
This might explain the shift in the Order's Grand Mastership -to
specifically French cultural figures who, like Nodier, had access to
otherwise unobtainable material. It might also explain the role of
Sauniere. Sauniere's predecessor, Antoine Bigou, had concealed, and
possibly composed, the coded parchments on the very eve of the
Revolution and then fled to Spain, where, shortly after, he died. It
is thus possible that Sion, for a time at any rate, did not know
precisely where the parchments were. But even if they were known to
have been in the church at Rennes-leChateau, they could not easily have
been retrieved without a sympathetic priest on the spot a man who would
do Sion's bidding, refrain from embarrassing questions, keep silence,
and not interfere with the
Order's interests and activities. If the parchments, moreover, referred to something else
something concealed in the vicinity of Rennes-leChateau, such a man would have been
all the more essential.
Sauniere died without divulging his secret. So did his housekeeper,
Marie
430
Denarnaud. During the ensuing years there have been many excavations
in the vicinity of Rennes-leChateau, but none of them has yielded anything. If, as we
assume, certain explosive items were once concealed in the environs, they would
certainly have been removed when Sauniere's story began to attract attention and
treasure-hunters unless these items were concealed in some depository immune to
treasure-hunters, in an underground crypt, for example, under a man-made pool on
private property. Such a crypt would ensure safety and be proof against any un
authorised excavations. No such excavations would be possible unless the pool were first
drained; and this could hardly be done clandestinely -especially by trespassers on private
land. In fact a manmade pool does exist near Rennes-leChateau near a site called,
appropriately enough, Lavaldieu (the Valley or Vale of God). This pool might well have
been constructed over an underground crypt which, in turn, might easily lead via a
subterranean passageway to any of the myriad caves honey combing the surrounding
mountains.
As for the parchments found by Sauniere, two of them -or, at any rate, facsimiles of two of
them have been reproduced, published and widely circulated. The other two, in contrast,
have been kept scrupulously secret.
In his conversation with us M. Plantard stated that they are currently in a safe deposit box
in a Lloyds' bank in London. Further than that we have been unable to trace them.
And Sauniere's money? We know that some of it seems to have been obtained through a
financial transaction involving the Archduke Johann von Habsburg.
We also know that substantial sums were made available not only to
Sauniere, but also to the bishop of Carcassonne, by the Abbe Henri
Boudet, cure of Rennes-les-Bains. There is reason to conclude that the
bulk of
Sauniere's revenue was paid to him by Boudet, through the
intermediary
Marie Denarnaud, Sauniere's housekeeper. Where Boudet - a poor parish priest himself
obtained such resources remains, of course, a mystery.
He would clearly seem to have been a representative of the Prieure de
Sion; but whether the money issued directly from Sion remains an
unanswered question. It might equally well have issued from the
treasury of the
Habsburgs. Or it might have issued from the Vatican, which might have
been subjected to high-level political blackmail by both Sion and the
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Habsburgs. In any case, the question of the money, or a treasure that
engendered it, became, for us, increasingly incidental, when measured against our
subsequent discoveries. Its chief function, in retrospect, had been to draw our attention to
the mystery. After that, it paled to relative insignificance.
We have formulated an hypothesis of a bloodline, descended from Jesus, which has
continued up to the present day. We cannot, of course, be certain that our hypothesis is
correct in every detail. But even if specific details here and there are subject to
modification, we are convinced that the essential outlines of our hypothesis are accurate.
We may perhaps have misconstrued the meaning of, say, a particular
Grand Master's activities; or an alliance in the power struggles and
political machinations of eighteenth-century politics. But our
researches have persuaded us that the mystery of RennesleChateau does
involve a serious attempt, by influential people, to re-establish a
Merovingian monarchy in France if not indeed in the whole of
Europe and that the claim to legitimacy of such a monarchy rests on a
Merovingian descent from Jesus.
Viewed from this perspective a number of the anomalies, enigmas and
unanswered questions raised by our researches become explicable. So do
a great many of the seemingly trivial but equally baffling fragments:
the title of the book associated with Nicolas Flamel, for example The
Sacred
Book of Abraham the Jew, Prince, Priest, Levite, Astrologer and
Philosopher to the Tribe of Jews who by the Wrath of God were Dispersed
amongst the
Gauls; or the symbolic Grail cup of Rene d'Anjou, which vouchsafed, to
the man who quaffed it at a single draught, a vision of both God and
the
Magdalene; or Andrea's Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz, which speaks of a
mysterious girl-child of royal blood, washed ashore in a boat, whose rightful heritage has
fallen into Islamic hands; or the secret to which Poussin was privy as well as the "Secret'
said to "lie at the heart' of the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement.
During the course of our research we had encountered a number of other
fragments as well. At the time they had seemed either totally
432
meaningless or irrelevant. Now, however, they, too, make sense. Thus
it would now seem clear why Louis XI regarded the Magdalene as a source
of the French royal line a belief which, even in the context of the
fifteenth century, at first appeared absurd." It would also be
apparent why the crown of Charlemagne a replica of which is now part of
the imperial Habsburg regalia is said to have borne the inscription
"Rex Salomon'. z And it would be apparent why the
Protocols of the Elders of Sion speak of a new king "of the holy seed
of
David'."
During the Second World War, for reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained,
the Cross of Lorraine became the symbol of the forces of Free France, under the
leadership of Charles de Gaulle.
In itself this is somewhat curious. Why should the Cross of Lorraine
the device of
Rene d'Anjou have been equated with France? Lorraine was never the
heartland of France. For most of her history, in fact, Lorraine was an
independent duchy, a Germanic state comprising part of the old Holy
Roman
Empire.
In part the Cross of Lorraine may have been adopted because of the
important role the Prieure de Sion seems to have played in the French
Resistance. In part it may have been adopted because of General de Gaulle's association
with members of the Prieure de Sion like M. Plantard. But it is interesting that, nearly
thirty years before, the Cross of Lorraine figured provocatively in a poem by Charles
Peguy.
Not long before his death at the Battle of the Marne in 1914, Peguy - a
close friend of Maurice
Barres, author of La Colline inspiree composed the following lines:
Les ames de Jesus c'est la croix de Lorraine,
Et le sang dans 1 'art ere et le sang dans la veine,
Et la source de grace et la Claire fontaine;
Les ames de Satan c'est la croix de Lorraine,
Et c'est la meme art ere et c'est la meme veine
Et c'est le meme sang et la trouble fontaine .. .
(The arms of Jesus are the Cross of Lorraine,
Both the blood in the artery and the blood in the vein,
Both the source of grace and the clear fountain;
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The arms of Satan are the Cross of Lorraine, And the same artery and
the same vein,
And the same blood and the troubled fountain .. . )4
In the late seventeenth century the Reverend Father Vincent, an
historian and antiquarian in Nancy, wrote a history of Sion in
Lorraine. He also wrote another work, entitled The True History of
Saint Sigisbert, which also contains an account of the life of Dagobert
1 1 .5 On the title page of this latter work there is an epigraph, a
quotation from the Fourth Gospel,
"He is among you and you do not know Him."
Even before we began our research, we ourselves were agnostic, neither pro-Christian
nor anti-Christian. By virtue of our background and study of comparative religions we
were sympathetic to the core of validity inherent in most of the world's major faiths, and
indifferent to the dogma, the theology, the accoutrements which comprise their
superstructure. And while we could accord respect to almost every creed, we could not
accord to any of them a monopoly on truth.
Thus, when our research led us to Jesus, we could approach him with
what we hoped was a sense of balance and perspective. We had no
prejudices or preconceptions one way or the other, no vested interests
of any kind, nothing to be gained by either proving or disproving
anything. In so far as "objectivity' is possible, we were able to
approach Jesus "objectively' as an historian would be expected to
approach Alexander, for example, or
Caesar. And the conclusions that forced themselves upon us, though certainly startling,
were not shattering. They did not necessitate a reappraisal of our personal convictions or
shake our personal hierarchies of values.
But what of other people? What of the millions of individuals across the world for whom
Jesus is the Son of God, the Saviour, the Redeemer? To what extent does the historical
Jesus, the priest-king who emerged from our research, threaten their faith? To what
extent have we violated what constitutes for many people their most cherished
understanding of the sacred?
We are well aware, of course, that our research has led us to
conclusions that, in many respects, are inimical to certain basic
tenets of modern
434
Christianity conclusions that are heretical, perhaps even blasphemous. From the
standpoint of certain established dogma we are no doubt guilty of such transgressions.
But we do not believe that we have desecrated, or even diminished, Jesus in the eyes of
those who do genuinely revere him. And while we ourselves cannot subscribe to Jesus's
divinity, our conclusions do not preclude others from doing so. Quite simply, there is no
reason why Jesus could not have married and fathered children, while still retaining his
divinity. There is no reason why his divinity should be dependent on sexual chastity.
Even if he were the Son of God, there is no reason why he should not have wed and sired
a family.
Underlying most Christian theology is the assumption that Jesus is God
incarnate. In other words God, taking pity on His creation,
incarnated
Himself in that creation and assumed human form. By doing so He would be able to
acquaint Himself at first-hand, so to speak, with the human condition. He would
experience at first-hand the vicissitudes of human existence. He would come to
understand, in the most profound sense, what it means to be a man to confront from a
human standpoint the loneliness, the anguish, the helplessness, the tragic mortality that
the status of manhood entails. By dint of becoming man God would come to know man in
a way that the Old Testament does not allow. Renouncing His Olympian aloofness and
remoteness, He would partake, directly, of man's lot. By doing so, He would redeem
man's lot would validate and justify it by partaking of it, suffering from it and eventually
being sacrificed by it.
The symbolic significance of Jesus is that he is God exposed to the spectrum of human
experience exposed to the first-hand knowledge of what being a man entails. But could
God, incarnate as Jesus, truly claim to be a man, to encompass the spectrum of human
experience, without coming to know two of the most basic, most elemental facets of the
human condition?
Could God claim to know the totality of human existence without confronting two such
essential aspects of humanity as sexuality and paternity?
We do not think so. In fact, we do not think the Incarnation truly symbolises what it is
intended to symbolise unless Jesus were married and sired children.
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The Jesus of the Gospels, and of established Christianity, is
ultimately incomplete a God whose incarnation as man is only partial. The Jesus who
emerged from our research enjoys, in our opinion, a much more valid claim to what
Christianity would, have him be.
On the whole, then, we do not think we have compromised or belittled Jesus.
We do not think he has suffered from the conclusions to which our
research led us. From our investigations emerges a living and
plausible Jesus a
Jesus whose life is both meaningful and comprehensible to modern man.
We cannot point to one man and assert that he is Jesus's lineal descendant.
Family trees bifurcate, subdivide and in the course of centuries
multiply into veritable forests. There are at least a dozen families
in Britain and
Europe today with numerous collateral branches who are of Merovingian
lineage. These include the houses of Habsburg-Lorraine (present
titular dukes of Lorraine and kings of Jerusalem), Plantard, Luxembourg
Montpezat,
Montesquieu and various others. According to the "Prieure documents',
the
Sinclair family in Britain is also allied to the bloodline, as are the various branches of the
Stuarts. And the Devonshire family, among others, would seem to have been privy to the
secret. Most of these houses could presumably claim a pedigree from Jesus; and if one
man, at some point in the future, is to be put forward as a new priest-king, we do not know
who he is.
But several things, at any rate, are clear. So far as we personally
are concerned, Jesus's lineal descendant would not be any more divine,
any more intrinsically miraculous, than the rest of us. This attitude
would undoubtedly be shared by a great many people today. We suspect
it is shared by the Prieure de Sion as well. Moreover the revelation
of an individual, or group of individuals, descended from Jesus would
not shake the world in the way it might have done as recently as a
century or two ago. Even if there were "incontrovertible proof of
such a lineage, many people would simply shrug and ask, "So what?" As
a result there would seem to be little point in the Prieure de Sion's
elaborate designs -unless those designs are in some crucial way linked
with politics. Whatever the theological repercussions of our
436
conclusions, there would seem, quite clearly, to be other
repercussions as well political repercussions with a potentially enormous impact, affecting
the thinking, the values, the institutions of the contemporary world in which we live.
Certainly in the past, the various families of Merovingian descent were thoroughly steeped
in politics, and their objectives included political power. This would also seem to have
been true of the Prieure de Sion and a number of its Grand Masters. There is no reason
to assume that politics should not be equally important to both Sion and the bloodline
today.
Indeed all the evidence suggests that Sion thinks in terms of a unity between what used to
be called Church and State a unity of secular and spiritual, sacred and profane, politics
and religion. In many of its documents Sion asserts that the new king in accordance with
Merovingian tradition, would "rule but not govern'. In other words he would be a priest-
king, who functions primarily in a ritual and symbolic capacity; and the actual business of
governing would be handled by someone else conceivably by the Prieure de Sion.
During the nineteenth century the Prieure de Sion, working through
Freemasonry and the Hieron du Val d'Or, attempted to establish ~ a
revived and "updated' Holy Roman Empire a kind of theocratic United
States of
Europe, ruled simultaneously by the Habsburgs and by a radically
reformed
Church. This enterprise was thwarted by the First World War and the
fall of
Europe's reigning dynasties. But it is not unreasonable to suppose
that
Sion's present objectives are basically similar at least in their general outlines to those of
the Hieron du Val d'Or.
Needless to say, our understanding of those objectives can only be
speculative. But they would seem to include a theocratic United States
of
Europe a trans or pan-European confederation assembled into a modern
empire and ruled by a dynasty descended from Jesus. This dynasty would
not only occupy a throne of political or secular power, but quite
conceivably, the throne of Saint Peter as well. Under that supreme
authority there might then be an interlocking network of kingdoms or
principalities, connected by dynastic alliance and intermarriage a kind
of twentieth-century "feudal system', but without the abuses usually
437
associated with that term. And the actual process of governing would
presumably reside with the Prieure de Sion which might take the form
of, say, a European
Parliament endowed with executive and/or legislative powers.
A Europe of this sort would constitute a new and unified political force in international
affairs an entity whose status would ultimately be comparable to that of the Soviet Union,
or the United States. Indeed it might well emerge stronger than either, because it would
rest on deep-rooted spiritual and emotional foundations, rather than on abstract,
theoretical or ideological ones. It would appeal not only to man's head, but to his heart as
well. It would draw its strength from tapping the collective psyche of Western Europe,
awakening the fundamental religious impulse.
Such a programme may well appear quixotic. But history by now should
have taught us not to underestimate the potential of the collective
psyche, and the power to be obtained by harnessing it. A few years ago
it would have seemed inconceivable that a religious zealot without an
army of his own, without a political party behind him, without anything
at his disposal save charisma and the religious hunger of a people
could single-handedly topple the modern and superbly equipped edifice
of the Shah's regime in
Iran. And yet that is precisely what the Ayatollah Khomeini managed to do.
We are not, of course, sounding a warning. We are not, implicitly or explicitly, comparing
the Prieure de Sion to the Ayatollah. We have no reason to think Sion sinister -as one
might the demagogue of Iran. But the demagogue of Iran bears eloquent witness to the
deep-rooted character, the energy, the potential power of man's religious impulse and the
ways in which that impulse can be channelled to political ends. Such ends need not entail
an abuse of authority. They may be as laudable as those of Churchill or de Gaulle were
during the Second World War. The religious impulse can be channelled in any of
innumerable directions. It is a source of immense potential power.
And it is all too often ignored or overlooked by modern governments
founded on, and often fettered to, reason alone. The religious impulse
reflects a profound psychological and emotional need. And
psychological and emotional needs are every bit as real as the need for
438
bread, for shelter, for material security.
We know that the Prieure de Sion is not a "lunatic fringe' organisation. We know it is well
financed and includes -or, at any race, commands sympathy from men in responsible and
influential positions in politics, economics, media, the arts. We know that since 1956 it
has increased its membership more than fourfold, as if it were mobil ising or preparing for
something; and M. Plantard told us personally that he and his Order were working to a
more or less precise timetable. We also know that since 1956 Sion has been making
certain information available discreetly, tantalisingly, in piecemeal fashion, in measured
quantities just sufficient to provide alluring hints. Those hints provoked this book.
If the Prieure de Sion intends to "show its cards', the time is ripe
for it to do so. The political systems and ideologies which, in the
early years of our century, seemed to promise so much have virtually
all displayed a degree of bankruptcy. Communism, socialism, fascism,
capitalism,
Western-style democracy have all, in one way or another, betrayed their promise,
jaundiced their adherents and failed to fulfill the dreams they engendered. Because of
their small-mindedness, lack of perspective and abuse of office, politicians no longer
inspire confidence, only distrust.
In the West today there is increasing cynicism, dissatisfaction and disillusion. There is
increasing psychic stress, anxiety and despair. But there is also an intensifying quest for
meaning, for emotional fulfilment, for a spiritual dimension to our lives, for something in
which genuinely to believe. There is a longing for a renewed sense of the sacred that
amounts, in effect, to a full-scale religious revival exemplified by the proliferation of sects
and cults, for example, and the swelling tide of fundamentalism in the United States.
There is also, increasingly, a desire for a true "leader' not a Fiihrer, but a species of wise
and benign spiritual figure, a priest king in whom mankind can safely repose its trust. Our
civilisation has sated itself with materialism and in the process become aware of a more
profound hunger. It is now beginning to look elsewhere, seeking the fulfilment of
emotional, psychological and spiritual needs.
Such an atmosphere would seem eminently conducive to the Prieure de
439
Sion's objectives. It places Sion in the position of being able to
offer an alternative to existing social and political systems. Such an alternative is hardly
likely to constitute Utopia or the New Jerusalem. But to the extent that it satisfies needs
which existing systems do not even acknowledge it could well prove immensely attractive.
There are many devout Christians who do not hesitate to interpret the
Apocalypse as nuclear holocaust. How might the advent of Jesus's
lineal descendant be interpreted? To a receptive audience, it might be
a kind of
Second Coming.
THE END
440
Postscript to the Paperback Edition
Since the publication of our book, much new material has been forthcoming.
Some readers, with extremely important new information, have been open and generous
in passing it on to us. Others have preferred to be cryptic, enigmatic and elliptical,
speaking mysteriously of unspecified knowledge they possess, or unspecified research
they have done which has led to equally unspecified conclusions of a
startling/amazing/shattering/definitive nature. Such hints may indeed attest to new and
valid material or to an irrelevant intellectual ingenuity and a need for spurious
mystification.
In any case, we have received letters from people so aggressively over-cautious and
secretive that we wonder why they bothered to write to us at all. Their shroud of obscurity
and opacity seems to have been generated by a fear (verging sometimes on paranoia)
that they may be deprived, unscrupulously, of the fruits of their work that we might steal
the results of their research, or their decipherments, or the treasure they are convinced
they have located, and leave them unacknowledged, un recognised unrewarded.
In The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, we have presented our material openly. We have
also supplied information about relevant sources, in order that others may be stimulated to
research of their own. The time for mystification is now past. We hope that readers who
have what they consider worthwhile material will be as forthcoming as we have tried to be.
We urge them, if possible, to publish it themselves. Alternatively, we request them to
make their findings available to us.
We hereby publicly state that no such material will be published, used
or exploited by us unless some prior and mutually acceptable
arrangement has been concluded with those who provide it. We also
441
publicly state that all such material, if used by us in any way, will
be duly acknowledged in a fashion that is likewise mutually acceptable. We would also
like to state that we have NO interest, beyond the historical and archaeological, in any
"treasure' uncovered in connection with Rennes-leChateau. We wish only to observe and
record such discoveries as and when they might be made. Any cash rewards accruing
from any 'treasure' would remain with those whose information leads to the location of the
relevant site.
442
Appendix The Alleged Grand Masters o f the Prieure de Sion
JEAN DE Gl SORS According to the "Prieure documents', jean de Gisors
was
Sion's first independent Grand Master, assuming his position after the 'cutting of the elm'
and the separation from the Knights Templar in 1 1 88. He was born in 1 1 33 and died in
1 220. He was at least nominal lord of the fortress of Gisors in Normandy where meetings
were traditionally convened between English and French kings and where, in 1188, a
curious squabble did occur which involved the cutting of an elm. Until 1 193 Jean was a
vassal of the king of England Henry II and then Richard I. He also possessed property in
England in Sussex, and the manor of Titchfield in Hampshire.
According to the "Prieure documents', he met with Thomas a Becket in 1 1 69.
No independent record of this meeting survives, but Becket was at Gisors in 1 169 and
must have had some contact with the lord of the fortress.
MARIE DE SAINT-CLAIR. Information on Marie de Saint Clair was even
more meagre than information on jean de Gisors._.Born around 1 192, she
was descended from Henry de Saint-Clair, Baron of Rosslyn in Scotland,
who accompanied Godfroi de Bouillon on the First Crusade. Rosslyn
itself was situated not far from the Templars' major preceptory in
Scotland, and
Rosslyn Chapel, built in the fifteenth century, became mantled with Rose Croix and
Freemasonry legends. Marie de Saint-Clair's grandmother married into the French
Chaumont family -as did Jean de Gisors. The genealogies of the Chaumont, Gisors and
Saint-Clair families were thus closely intertwined.
There is some evidence that Marie de Saint Clair was, in fact, jean
de
Gisors' second wife, but we could not confirm this definitely.
According to the genealogies in the "Prieure documents', Marie's mother
was one Isabel
443
Levis. This surname, which would seem to 5 The Families of Gisors,
Payen and
Saint-Clair
From the work of Henri Lobineau (Henri de Lenoncourt)
Houu of Chaumont
TIBAUU DEPAYEN
"The Moor of Gardille'
10121 HI IGUESROBERT=ELEANORE
DE CHAUMONTDE CHAUMONT DE GUI TRY
101 1-671 01 7_75
TIBAUD DE PA YEN ADELAIDE - HUGUES DE CHAUMONT
1 035-91 1 036-951 031 -75 1 st Lord of Gisors
OSMON DE CHAUMONT
CATHERINE = HUGUES DE PA YEN1060-1 116
1070-1131 LordofGuury
CM.
Order of the Temple GUILLAUME DE CHAUMONT 1 091 -?
Lord of Gunry
Rl CHILDE = ROBERT DE CHAUMONT
heiress of Samt-Clatr3q-7q
Lord of Guury
TIBAUD 1 -MA TILDE
"It. Pay., 1055-1130
Lord of Gieors
GUILLAUME ROBERT
DE CHAUMONT DE SAINT-CLAIR
1155-1221 1160-1232
HUGUES II
1090-1142
Lord of Gisors
Sours Mermtnps
JEAN VI IDOINE
DESPLANTARD 1135-91
1130.? JEAN? DE CHAUMONT
1133-1220
Load of Guors frotoder of the
Rme-Crowin 1188
GM. Prieurcde Sion
GIRARD AGNES D'ASSALY - HUGUES III
1 1 83-1 21 3 1 1 81 -1 225 Abbot, Pricurf d< StonLord of Gisors
GUILLAUME ==T== IO LANDE DE BAR
1219_1307
Lord of Gnwrs
444
GM. Riewt de Sinn 1 266 Line continues to present day be of Judaic
origin, occurs frequently in the Languedoc, where there were
Jewish settlements dating from before the Christian epoch.
GUILLAUME DE Gl SORS Guillaume de Gisors, jean de Gisors' grandson,
was born in 1219. We had already encountered his name in connection
with the mysterious head found in the Templars' Paris preceptory after
the arrests in 1307. Apart from this, however, we found only one
external mention of him, on a deed dated 1244, which states that he was
a knight. According to the genealogies in the "Prieure documents', his
sister married one jean des
Plantard. The "Prieure documents' also state that Guillaume was inducted into the Order
of the Ship and the Double Crescent in 1269. This Order was created by Louis IX (Saint
Louis) for nobles who accompanied him on the illfated Sixth Crusade. If Guillaume de
Gisors was a member of it, he must therefore have been with Saint Louis during the
campaign in Egypt.
EDOUARD DE BAR. Barn in 1302, Edouard, Comte de Bar, was a grandson
of
Edward I of England and a nephew of Edward II. He was descended from a family which
had been influential in the Ardennes since Merovingian times and was almost certainly
connected with the Merovingian dynasty.
Edouard's daughter married into the house of Lorraine, and the
genealogies of Bar and
Lorraine subsequently become closely intertwined.
In 1308, at the age of six (!), Edouard accompanied the duke of
Lorraine into battle, was captured and not ransomed until 1314. On
attaining his majority he purchased the seigneury of Stenay from one of
his uncles, Jean de Bar. In 1324 he was allied in military operations
with Ferry de Lorraine and Jean de Luxembourg and the house of
Luxembourg, like that of
Lorraine, would seem to be of Merovingian blood. In 1336 Edouard died in a shipwreck
off the coast of Cyprus.
No independent source could provide us with any link between Edouard de
Bar and Guillaume de Gisors. According to the genealogies in the
"Prieure documents', however, Edouard was grand-nephew of Guillaume's
wife, lolande de Bar. While we could not confirm this affiliation, we
445
found nothing to contradict it. If, as the "Prieure documents'
maintain, Edouard assumed Sion's Grand
Mastership in 1307, he would have done so at the age of five. This is not necessarily
improbable, if he was captured on the battlefield at the age of six. Until Edouard attained
his majority the comte of Bar was governed by his uncle, jean de Bar, who acted as
regent. It is possible that Jean acted in the capacity of "regent Grand Master' as well. But
there would seem to be no sense in the selection of a five-year-old boy as Grand Master
unless the Grand Mastership was in some way linked to heredity or blood descent.
JEANNE DE BAR. Jeanne de Bar was born in 1295, the elder sister of Edouard.
She was thus a granddaughter of Edward I of England, and a niece of
Edward
II. In 1310, at the age of fifteen, she was married to the earl of
Warren,
Surrey, Sussex and Strathern and divorced from him some five years
later, after he was excommunicated for adultery. Jeanne continued to
live in
England, however; and though we could find no detailed record of her
activities, she seems to have enjoyed extremely cordial relations with
the
English throne. She seems to have had similar relations with the king
of
France who in 1345 invited her back to the continent, where she became
regent of the comte of Bar. In 1353 despite the Hundred Years War and
the consequent hostility between England and France Jeanne returned
to
England. When the French monarch was captured at the Battle of
Poitiers in 1356 and imprisoned in London, Jeanne was allowed to
"comfort' and minister to him. During his subsequent prolonged
incarceration, Jeanne is said to have been his mistress, although both
were elderly at the time. She died in
London in 1361.
According to the "Prieure documents', Jeanne de Bar presided over the
Prieure de Sion until 1351 , ten years before her death. She thus appears to be the only
figure on the list of Grand Masters to have resigned, abdicated, or been deposed from her
position.
JEAN DE SAINT-CLAIR. Our researches yielded virtually nothing about
Jean de
Saint-Clair, who seems to have been a very minor figure indeed. He was
born around 1329 and descended from the French houses of Chaumont,
446
Gisors and Saint-Clair-sur-Epte. According to the genealogies in the
"Prieure documents', his grandfather was married to Jeanne de Bar's aunt. This
relationship is certainly tenuous. Nevertheless, it would seem to suggest that the Grand
Mastership of Sion was still circulating exclusively within a network of interlinked families.
BLANCHE D'EVREUX. Blanche d'Evreux was in fact Blanche de Navarre, daughter of
the king of Navarre. She was born in 1332. From her father she inherited the comtes of
Longueville and Evreux, both immediately adjacent to Gisors; and in 1359 she became
countess of Gisors as well. Ten years previously she had married Philippe VI, king of
France, through whom she almost certainly knew Jeanne de Bar. She spent much of her
life at the Chateau of Neuphle, near Gisors, and died there in 1398.
According to numerous legends, Blanche was immersed in alchemical studies and
experimentation; and tradition speaks of laboratories at certain of her chateaux. She is
said to have possessed a priceless alchemical work, produced in the Languedoc during
the fourteenth century but based on a manuscript dating from the last days of the
Merovingian dynasty seven hundred years before. She is also rumoured to have been a
personal patron of Nicolas Flamel.
NicoLns FLA MEL Flamel's is the first name on the list of Grand Masters not to be
affiliated by blood with the genealogies in the "Prieure documents'; and with him the
Grand Mastership of Sion seems to have ceased being exclusively a family sinecure.
Flamel was born around 1330 and worked for a time as a scrivener, or copyist, in Paris.
By virtue pf his occupation, many rare books passed through his hands, and he acquired
proficiency in painting, poetry, mathematics and architecture. He also acquired an interest
in alchemy, and Cabalistic and Hermetic thought.
Around 1361 Flamel, according to his own account, happened upon the
alchemical text that was to transform his life. Its complete title is
both puzzling and interesting The Sacred "Book of Abraham the Jew,
Prince,
Priest, Levite, Astrologer and Philosopher to that Tribe of Jews who by
447
the Wrath of God were Dispersed amongst the Gauls. This work
subsequently became one of the most famous in Western esoteric tradition. The original
is said to have been deposited in the Arsenal Library in Paris. Reproductions of it have
been assiduously, religiously and, it would seem, vainly studied by successive generations
of would-be adepts.
According to his own account, Flamel pored over the book with no
greater success for twenty-one years. At last, on a journey to Spain
in 1382, he claimed to have met a converted Jew in Leon who elucidated
the text for him. On returning to Paris he applied what he had
learned, and is said to have performed his first successful alchemical
transmutation at noon on
January 17th the date that recurs so persistently in connection with
Sauniere and Rennes-leChateau.
Whether Flamel's account is accurate or not,~the fact remains that he became
phenomenally wealthy. By the end of his life he owned more than thirty houses and tracts
of land in Paris alone. At the same time, however, he seems to have been a modest man
who did not revel-in power and lavished much of his wealth on good works. By 1413 he
had founded and endowed fourteen hospitals, seven churches and three chapels in Paris,
and a comparable number in Boulogne the old comte of Godfroi de Bouillon's father. This
altruism, perhaps even more than his dazzling success, endeared him to posterity. As
late as the eighteenth century he was revered by men like Sir Isaac Newton, who
painstakingly read through his works, copiously annotated them and even copied one of
them out by hand.
RENE D'ANJOU. We discovered no recorded contact between Flamel and
Rene d'Anjou. At the same time, however, Rene himself gave us
sufficient material to ponder. Although little known today, he was one
of the most important figures in the years immediately preceding the
Renaissance. Born in 1408, he came, in the course of his life, to hold
an awesome array of titles. Among the most important were count of
Bar, count of Provence, count of Piedmont, count of Guise, duke of
Calabria, duke of Anjou, duke of Lorraine, king of
Hungary, king of Naples and Sicily, king of Aragon, Valencia, Majorca
and
Sardinia.
448
And, perhaps most resonant of all, king of Jerusalem. This latter
status was, of course, purely titular. Nevertheless, it invoked a
continuity extending back to Godfroi de Bouillon, and was acknowledged
by other
European potentates. One of Rene's daughters, in 1445, married Henry
VI of
England and became a prominent figure in the Wars of the Roses.
According to the "Prieure documents', Rene became Grand Master of Sion in 1418 at the
age of ten and his uncle, Louis, Cardinal de Bar, is said to have exercised a "regency
Grand Mastership' until 1428. Our research revealed that Rene was inducted into an
order of some kind in 1 41 8 1 "Ordre du Levrier Blanc ("White Greyhound') but we
discovered no further information of consequence about it. Certainly it might have been
Sion under another name.
Sometime between 1420 and 1422 the cardinal of Lorraine created another
order, I'Ordre de la Fidelite, and Rene was admitted as one of the
original members. In 1448 Rene established an order of his own, the
Order of the
Crescent. Rene himself described the Order of the Crescent as a
revived version of the old Order of the Ship and the Double Crescent of
which
Guillaume de Gisors was a member a century and a half before. The
original
Knights of the Crescent included Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan and
father of Leonardo da Vinci's patron; the count of Lenoncourt whose
descendant, according to the "Prieure documents," compiled the
genealogies in the
Dossiers secrets; and one Ferri, lord of the important fiefdom in Lorraine dating from
Merovingian times and called Sion-Vaudemont. These individuals were intended by Rene
to comprise his riposte, so to speak, to the Order of the Garter in England and the Order
of the Golden Fleece in Burgundy. But for reasons that remain unclear the Order of the
Crescent incurred ecclesiastical displeasure and was suppressed by the Pope.
It is from Rene d'Anjou that the modern Cross of Lorraine symbol of
the
Free French Forces during the Second World War ultimately derives. When he became
duke of Lorraine the 'now familiar cross with its two horizontal bars became his personal
device.
449
10 LANDE DE BAR. Born around 1428, lolande de Bar was Rene d'Anjou's
daughter. In 1445 she was married to Ferri, lord of
Sion-Vaudemont and one of the original knights in Rene's Order of the
Crescent. After Ferris death lolande spent most of her life at
Sion-Vaudemont -which, under her auspices, was extended from a local
pilgrimage centre to a sacred site for the whole of Lorraine. In the
distant pagan past the place had already enjoyed such status, and a
statue of
Rosemerthe, an old Gallo-Teutonic Mother Goddess, was subsequently
found there. Even in early Christian times the site was regarded as
holy although its name then was Mount Semita, implying something more
Judaic than
Christian. During the Merovingian epoch a statue of the Virgin had
been erected there, and in 1070 the ruling count of Vaudemont had
publicly proclaimed himself "vassal of the Queen of Heaven'. The
Virgin of Sion was officially declared "Sovereign of the Comte of
Vaudemont', festivals were held in her honour every May and she was
acknowledged Protectress of all
Lorraine. Our researches yielded a charter, dating from 1396, which
pertains to a special chivalric confraternity based on the mountain,
Confraternity of Chevaliers de Sion which reputedly traced' its origins to the old abbey on
Mount Sion just outside Jerusalem. By the fifteenth century, however, Sion-Vaudemont
seems to have lost some of its significance, lolande de Bar restored to it something of its
former glory.
lolande's son, Rene, subsequently became duke of Lorraine. On his
parents' instructions he was educated in Florence, thus becoming well
versed in the esoteric tradition and orientation of the academies. His
tutor was Georges
Antoine Vespucci, one of Botticelli's chief patrons and sponsors.
SANDRO FILIPEPI. Better known as Botticelli, Sandro Filipepi was born
in 1444. With the exception of Nicolas Flamel, his is the first name
on the list of Sion's alleged Grand Masters not to be directly
affiliated with the families whose genealogies figure in the "Prieure
documents'. At the same time, however, he seems to have enjoyed an
extremely close rapport with some of those families. Among his patrons
were the Medicis, the Estes, the
450
Gonzagas and the Vespuccis the last of whom had provided the tutor for
lolande de Bar's son, the future duke of Lorraine.
Botticelli himself studied under Filippo Lippi and Mantegna, both of
whom had been patronised by Rene d'Anjou. He also studied under
Verrocchio, an alchemist and exponent of Hermetic thought, whose other
pupils included
Leonardo da Vinci.
Like most people we did not at first think of Botticelli in "occult' or esoteric terms. But
recent scholars of the Renaissance Edgar Wind, for instance, and Frances Yates have
effectively argued an esoteric predisposition in him, and we deferred to the
persuasiveness of their conclusions. Botticelli does seem to have been an "esotericisf,
and the greater part of his work reflects an embodiment of esoteric principles. One of the
earliest known decks of Tarot cards is ascribed to Botticelli or his tutor, Mantegna. And
the famous painting "Primavera' is, among many other things, an elaboration on the theme
of Arcadia and the esoteric "underground stream'.
LEONARDO DA VINCI. Born in 1452, Leonardo was well acquainted with
Botticelli in large part through their joint apprenticeship to Verrocchio.
Like Botticelli, he was patronised by the Medicis, the Estes and the
Gonzagas. He was also patronised by Ludovico Sforza, son of
Francesco
Sforza, one of Rene d'Anjou's closest friends and an original member of
the
Order of the Crescent.
Leonardo's esoteric interests and orientation, like Botticelli's, have by now been well
established. Frances Yates, in conversation with one of our researchers, described him
as an early "Rosicrucian'. But in Leonardo's case esoterica would appear to extend even
further than in Botticelli's.
Even Vasari, his biographer and contemporary, describes him as being of "an heretical
cast of mind'. What precisely might have constituted his heresy remains unclear. During
the last few years, however, certain authorities have ascribed to him an ancient heretical
belief that Jesus had a twin.
Certainly there is evidence for this contention, in a cartoon sketch
called
"The Virgin with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Anne', and in the
famous
"Last Supper' where there are, in fact, two virtually identical Christs.
But there is no indication of whether the doctrine of Jesus's twin is
451
to be taken literally or symbolically. Between 1515 and 1517
Leonardo, as a military engineer, was attached to the army of Charles
de Montpensier and de Bourbon, Constable of France, Viceroy of
Languedoc and Milan. In 1518 he established himself at the Chateau
of
Cloux, and again seems to have been in proximity to the constable, who was living near
by at Amboise.
CONN TABLE DE BOURBON. Charles de Montpensier and de Bourbon, Duke
of
Chatellerault, Constable of France, was probably the single most powerful lord in France
in the early sixteenth century. Born in 1490, he was the son of Claire de Gonzaga; and
his sister married the duke of Lorraine, grandson of lolande de Bar and great-grandson of
Rene d'Anjou. Among Charles's personal entourage was one jean de Joyeuse, who,
through marriage, had become lord of Couiza, Rennes-leChateau and Arques, near where
the tomb identical to the one in Poussin's painting stands.
As Viceroy of Milan, Charles was in contact with Leonardo da Vinci; and
this contact seems to have continued later, near Amboise. In 1 521 ,
however,
Charles incurred the displeasure of Franqois I of France, and was
forced to abandon his estates and flee the country incognito. He found
a refuge with
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and became a commander of the imperial army.
In this capacity he defeated and captured the French king at the Battle
of
Pavia in 1525. Two years later he died while besieging Rome.
FERDINAND DE GONZAGUE. Ferrante de Gonzaga, as he is more commonly
known, was born in 1507, the son of the duke of Mantua and of Isabelle
d'Este one of Leonardo's most zealous patrons. His primary title was
count of
Guastalla. In 1527 he assisted his cousin, Charles de Montpensier and
de
Bourbon, in the latter's military operations. Some years later he seems to have been
covertly in league with Franqois de Lorraine, Duke of Guise, who came within a hair's-
breadth of seizing the French throne. Like virtually all the Gonzagas of Mantua, Ferrante
was an assiduous devotee of esoteric thought.
At the same time, he also confronted us with the only fragment of
452
ostensibly wrong information we encountered in the whole of the
"Prieure documents'. According to the list of Sion's
Grand Masters in the Dossiers secrets, Ferrante presided over the Order until his death in
1575. According to independent sources, however, he is believed to have died near
Brussels in 1557. The circumstances surrounding his death are extremely vague, and it is
possible, of course, that he did not die in 1557 at all, but merely went to ground. On the
other hand, the date in the Dossiers secrets may be a genuine error. What is more,
Ferrante had a son, Cesar, who did die in 1575, and who may somehow have become
confused with his father -deliberately or otherwise. The point is that we found no other
such apparently glaring inaccuracies in the "Prieure documents', even when the subject
was far more obscure and less susceptible to contradiction from independent sources. It
seemed almost inconceivable to us that an error in this particular instance could occur
through mere carelessness or oversight. On the contrary it was almost as if the error, by
so flagrantly confuting accepted accounts, was intended to convey something.
LOUIS DE NE VERS Louis, Duke of Nevers, was, in fact, Louis de
Gonzaga. Born in 1539, he was the nephew of Ferrante de Gonzaga, his
predecessor on the list of Sion's Grand Masters. His brother married
into the Habsburg family and his daughter married the duke of
Longueville, a title formerly held by
Blanche d'Evreux; his great-niece married the duke of Lorraine and devoted considerable
interest to the old sacred site of Sion-Vaudemont. In 1622 she had a special cross
installed there, and in 1627 a religious house and school were founded.
During the Wars of Religion Louis de Nevers was closely allied to the
house of Lorraine and its cadet branch, the house of Guise who
effectively exterminated the old Valois dynasty of France and nearly
obtained the throne for themselves. In 1584, for example, Louis signed
a treaty with the duke of Guise and the cardinal of Lorraine, pledging
mutual opposition to
Henri III of France. Like his colleagues, however, he became
reconciled to
Henri IV, and served as Superintendent of Finances to the new monarch.
concert with Robert Fludd's father. Sir Thomas Fludd was Treasurer of
453
the military contingent sent by Elizabeth I of England to support the
French king. Louis de Nevers, like all the Gonzagas, was deeply versed
in esoteric tradition and is believed to have associated with Giordano
Bruno who, according to Frances Yates, was involved in certain secret
Hermetic societies which anticipated the
"Rosicrucians'. In 1582, for example, Louis was in England, consorting
with
Sir Philip Sidney (author of Arcadia) and John Dee, the foremost English esotericist of his
age. A year later Bruno visited Oxford and consorted with the same people, and, Frances
Yates maintains, furthered the activities of their clandestine organisation.
ROBERT FLUDD. Born in 1574, Robert Fludd inherited John Dee's mantle
as
England's leading exponent of esoteric thought. He wrote and published prolifically on a
broad spectrum of esoteric subjects, and developed one of the most comprehensive
formulations of Hermetic philosophy ever written.
Frances Yates suggests that some of his work may be "the Seal or secret
code of a Hermetic sect or society'. Although Fludd himself never
claimed to be a member of the "Rosicrucians', then causing a sensation
on the continent, he warmly endorsed them, declaring that the "highest
good' was the "Magic,
Cabala and Alchymia of the Brothers of the Rosy Cross'.
At the same time Fludd rose to an esteemed position in the London
College of Physicians and his friends included William Harvey, who
discovered the circulation of the blood. Fludd also enjoyed the favour
of James I and
Charles I, both of whom granted him rent from lands in Suffolk. He was
among the conclave of scholars who presided over the translation of
the
King James Bible.
Fludd's father had been associated with Louis de Nevers. Fludd himself was educated at
Oxford, where John Dee and Sir Philip Sidney seem to have established an enclave of
esoteric interests a few years before. Between 1596 and 1602 Fludd travelled extensively
in Europe, consorting with many people subsequently involved in the "Rosicrucian'
movement. Among these was one Janus Gruter, a close personal friend of Johann
Valentin Andrea.
In 1602 Fludd received an interesting and, for our purposes,
454
significant commission. He was specifically called to Marseilles, to
act as personal tutor to the sons of the duke of
Guise, particularly Charles, the young duke of Guise. His association
with
Charles appears to have continued as late as 1620.
In 1610 Charles, Duke of Guise, married HenrietteCatherine de Joyeuse.
The taller's possessions included r_n,_,;7a _a+ hP fnn+ of the:
mn,m+ain nn which _RPnnac_IP_ Chateau is situated. And they included Arques, site of
the tomb identical to the tomb in Poussin's painting.
Some twenty years later, in 1 631 , the duke of Guise, after conspiring
against the French throne, went into voluntary exile in Italy, where he
was soon joined by his wife. In 1640 he died. But his wife was not
allowed to return to France until she consented to sell Couiza and
Arques to the crown, z
JOHANN VALENTIN ANDREA. Andrea, the son of a Lutheran pastor and
theologian, was born in 1586 in Wurttemburg, which bordered on Lorraine
and the
Palatinate of the Rhine. As early as 1610 he was travelling about
Europe and was rumoured to be a member of a secret society of Hermetic
or esoteric initiates. In 1614 he was ordained deacon of a small town
near Stuttgart, and seems to have remained there, unscathed, through
the turmoil of the
Thirty Years War (1618-48J that followed.
ROBERT BOYLE. Robert Boyle was born in 1627, the youngest son of the
earl of
Cork. Later he would be offered a peerage of his own, and declined it. He was educated
at Eton, where his provost, Sir Henry Wotton, was closely connected with the
"Rosicrucian' entourage of Frederick of the Palatinate.
In 1639 Boyle embarked on a prolonged European tour. He spent some
time in
Florence where the Medicis, resisting papal pressures, continued to
extend support for esotericists and scientists, including Galileo. And
he passed twenty-one months in Geneva where he acquired a number of
esoteric interests, including demonology. During his sojourn in Geneva
he obtained a work, "The Devil of Mascon', which he had translated by
one Pierre du
Moulin, who was to become a lifelong friend. Du Moulin's father was
personal chaplain to Catherine de Bar, wife of Henri de Lorraine, Duke
of
455
Bar. Subsequently, the elder du Moulin obtained the assiduous
patronage of Henri de la Tour dAuvergne, Viscount of Turenne and Duke of Bouillon.
On his return to England in 1645, Boyle immediately established contact with the circle of
Samuel Hartlib, Andrea's close friend and correspondent.
In letters dated 1646 and 1647, he speaks repeatedly of the
"Invisible
College'. He declares, for example, that 'the cornerstones of the Invisible or (as they term
themselves) the Philosophical College, do now and then honour me with their company."
By 1654 Boyle was at Oxford, where he consorted with John Wilkin,
former chaplain to Frederick of the Palatinate. In 1 660 Boyle was
among the first public figures to offer allegiance to the newly
restored Stuarts, and
Charles II became patron of the Royal Society. In 1668 he established
himself in London, living with his sister who was related by marriage
to
John Dury, another friend and correspondent of Andrea. At his London
premises Boyle received numerous distinguished visitors including
Cosimo
III de' Medici, subsequently ruler of Florence and grand duke of Tuscany.
During these years Boyle's two closest friends were Isaac Newton and
John
Locke. He is said to have taught Newton the secrets of alchemy. In
any case the two of them met regularly to discuss the subject and study
alchemical works. Locke, in the meantime, shortly after making Boyle's
acquaintance, embarked for a lengthy stay in the south of France. He
is known to have made special visits to the graves of Nostradamus and
Rene d'Anjou. He is known to have wandered in the vicinity of
Toulouse, Carcassonne, Narbonne and, quite conceivably,
Rennes-leChateau. He is known to have associated with the duchess of
Guise. He is known to have studied Inquisition reports on the Cathars,
as well as the history of the legends according to which the Magdalene
brought the Holy Grail to Marseilles. In 1676 he visited the
Magdalene's alleged residence at Saint Baume.
While Locke explored the Languedoc, Boyle maintained a voluminous
correspondence with the continent. Among his papers there are letters
comprising half of a sustained exchange with an elusive and otherwise
unknown individual in France one Georges Pierre, quite possibly a
456
pseudonym. These letters deal extensively with alchemy and alchemical
experimentation. More important, however, they speak of Boyle's
membership of a secret Hermetic society which also included the duke of
Savoy and du
Moulin.
Between 1675 and 1677 Boyle published two ambitious alchemical
treatises Incalescence of Quicksilver with Gold and A Historical
Account of a
Degradation of Gold. In 1689 he published an official statement
declaring he could not receive visitors on certain days which he had
set aside for alchemical experimentation. This experimentation, he
wrote, was to comply with my former intention to leave a kind of
Hermetic legacy to the studious disciples of that art and to deliver
candidly in the annexed paper some processes, chemical and medical,
that are less simple and plain than those barely luciferous ones I have
been wont to affect and of a more difficult and elaborate kind than
those I have hitherto published and more of a kind to the noblest
Hermetic secrets or as Helmont styles them "arcana majora'.3
He adds that he intends to speak as plainly as he can, "though the full and complete uses
are not mentioned, partly because, in spite of my philanthropy, I was engaged to secrecy."
The "annexed paper' to which Boyle alludes was never found. It may well have passed
into the hands of Locke or, more likely, Newton. On his death in 1691 Boyle entrusted all
his other papers to these two confidants, as well as samples of a mysterious "red powder'
which figured prominently in much of Boyle's correspondence and in his alchemical
experiments.
Isnnc NEWTON. Isaac Newton was born in Lincolnshire in 1642 descended from "ancient
Scottish nobility', he himself insisted, although no one seems to have taken this claim very
seriously. He was educated at Cambridge, elected to the Royal Society in 1672 and
made Boyle's acquaintance for the first time in the following year. In 1689-90 he became
associated with John Locke and an elusive, enigmatic individual named Nicholas Fatio de
Duillier.
457
Descended from Genevan aristocracy, Fatio de Duillier seems to have
wafted with cavalier insouciance through the Europe of his time. On occasion, he appears
to have worked as a spy, usually against Louis XIV of France. He also appears to have
been on intimate terms with every important scientist of the age. And from the time of his
appearance in England, he was Newton's single closest friend. For at least the next
decade their two names were inextricably linked.
In 1696 Newton became Warden of the Royal Mint and was subsequently
instrumental in fixing the gold standard. In 1703 he was elected
President of the Royal Society. Around this time he also became
friendly with a young
French Protestant refugee named jean Desaguliers, who was one of the
Royal
Society's two Curators of Experiments. In the years that followed,
Desaguliers became one of the leading figures in the astonishing
proliferation of Freemasonry throughout Europe. He was associated with
leading Masonic figures like James Anderson, the Chevalier Ramsay and
Charles Radclyffe. And in 1731, as Master of the Masonic Lodge at
The
Hague, he presided over the initiation of the first European prince to
become a member of "the craft'. This prince was Francois, Duke of
Lorraine who, after his marriage to Maria Theresa of Austria, became
Holy Roman
Emperor.
There is no record of Newton himself having been a Freemason. At the
same time, however, he was a member of a semi-Masonic institution,
the
"Gentleman's Club of Spalding' which included such notables as
Alexander
Pope. Moreover certain of his attitudes and works reflect interests
shared by Masonic figures of the period. Like many Masonic authors,
for example, he esteemed Noah, more than Moses, as the ultimate source
of esoteric wisdom. As early as 1689 he had embarked on what he
considered one of his most important works, a study of ancient
monarchies. This work, The
Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, attempted to establish the
origins of the institution of kingship, as well as the primacy of
Israel over other cultures of antiquity. According to Newton, ancient
Judaism had been a repository of divine knowledge, which had
subsequently been diluted, corrupted and largely lost. Nevertheless,
he believed that some of it had filtered down to Pythagoras, whose
458
"music of the spheres' he regarded as a metaphor for the Law of
Gravity. In his attempt to formulate a precise scientific methodology
for dating events in both Scripture and classical myth, he employed
Jason's quest for the Golden
Fleece as a pivotal event; and like other Masonic and esoteric writers, he interpreted that
quest as an alchemical metaphor. He also endeavoured to discern Hermetic
"correspondences' or correlations between music and architecture. And, like many
Masons he ascribed great significance to the configuration and dimensions of Solomon's
Temple. The dimensions and configuration of the Temple he believed to conceal
alchemical formulae; and he believed the ancient ceremonies in the Temple to have
involved alchemical processes.
Such preoccupations on Newton's part were something of a revelation to us.
Certainly they do not concur with his image as it is promulgated in our own century -the
image of the scientist who, once and for all, established the separation of natural
philosophy from theology. In fact, however, Newton, more than any other scientist of his
age, was steeped in Hermetic texts and, in his own attitudes, reflected Hermetic tradition.
A deeply religious person, he was obsessed by the search for a divine unity and network
of correspondences inherent in nature.
This search led him into an exploration of sacred geometry and
numerology a study of the intrinsic properties of shape and number. By
virtue of his association with Boyle, he was also a practising
alchemist who, in fact, attributed a paramount importance to his
alchemical works In addition to personally annotated copies of the
"Rosicrucian' manifestos, his library included more than a hundred alchemical works. One
of these, a volume by Nicolas Flamel, he had laboriously copied in his own hand.
Newton's preoccupation with alchemy continued all his life. He maintained a voluminous
and cryptic correspondence on the subject with Boyle, Locke, Fatio de Duillier and others.
One letter even has certain key words excised.
If Newton's scientific interests were less orthodox than we had at
first imagined, so were his religious views. He was militantly, albeit
quietly, hostile to the idea of the Trinity. He also repudiated the
fashionable
459
Deism of his time, which reduced the cosmos to a vast mechanical
divinity of Jesus and avidly collected all manuscripts pertaining to
the issue. He doubted the complete authenticity of the New Testament,
believing certain passages to be corruptions interpolated in the fifth
century. He was deeply intrigued by some of the early Gnostic heresies
and wrote a study of one of them.s
Prompted by Fatio de Duillier, Newton also displayed a striking and surprising sympathy
for the Camisards, or Prophets of Cevennes, who, shortly after 1705, began appearing in
London. So called because of their white, tunics, the Camisards, like the Cathars before
460
them, had arisen in the south of France. Like the Cathars they were vehemently opposed
461
462
Like the Cathars they queried Jesus's divinity. And like the Cathars they had been brutally
suppressed by military force -in effect, an eighteenth-century Albigensian Crusade.
Driven out of the Languedoc, the heretics found refuge in Geneva and London.
A few weeks before his death Newton, aided by a few intimate friends, systematically
burned numerous boxes of manuscripts and personal papers.
With considerable surprise, his contemporaries noted that he did not, on his death-bed,
request last rites.
CHARLES RADCLYFFE. From the sixteenth century the Radclyffes had been
an influential Northumbrian family. In 1688, shortly before he was
deposed,
James II had created them earls of Derwentwater. Charles Radclyffe
himself was born in 1 693. His mother was an illegitimate daughter of
Charles II by the king's mistress, Moll Davis. Radclyffe was thus, on
his mother's side, of royal blood a grandson of Charles II. He was
cousin to Bonnie Prince
Charlie and to George Lee, Earl of Lichfield another illegitimate grandson of the Stuart
king. Not surprisingly, therefore, Radclyffe devoted much of his life to the Stuart cause.
CHARLES DE LORRAINE. Born in 1744, Charles de Lorraine was Francois's
brother and junior by four years. It is probable that both brothers
463
had been exposed, in boyhood, to a Jacobite influence, for their
father had offered protection and refuge at Bar-leDuc to the exiled
Stuarts. In 1735, when FranQois married
Maria Theresa, Charles became brother-in-law to the Austrian empress.
Eleven years later, in 1744, he consolidated this relationship by
marrying Maria
Theresa's sister, Marie Anne. In the same year, he was appointed governor-general of
the Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium) and commander-in-chief of the Austrian army.
Francois, on his marriage, had formally renounced all claim to
Lorraine, which was entrusted to a French puppet. In exchange he
received the archduchy of Tuscany. Charles, however, adamantly refused
to acknowledge this transaction, refused to renounce his claim to
Lorraine. Given
Franqois's abdication, he was thus, in effect, titular duke of Lorraine.
And in 1742 he advanced with an army of 70,000 troops to recapture his native soil. He
would most likely have done so, had he not been obliged to divert his army to Bohemia in
order to thwart a French invasion.
In the military operations that followed Charles proved himself a skilled commander.
Today he would no doubt be regarded as one of the better generals of his age, were it not
his misfortune to be pitted repeatedly against Frederick the Great. It was against Charles
that Frederick won one of his most dazzling and decisive victories, the Battle of Leuthen in
1757.
And yet Frederick regarded Charles as a worthy and "redoubtable' adversary, and spoke
of him only in glowing terms.
Following his defeat at Leuthen, Charles was relieved of command by
Maria
Theresa and retired to his capital of Brussels. Here he established himself as a patron of
the arts and assembled a glittering court around him an elegant, gracious and highly
cultivated court which became a centre for literature, painting, music and the theatre. In
many respects this court resembled that of Charles's ancestor, Rene d'Anjou; and the
resemblance may well have been deliberate.
In 1761 Charles became Grand Master of the Teutonic Order a latter-day chivalric vestige
of the old Teutonic Knights, the Templars' Germanic proteges who had been a major
military power until the sixteenth century.
464
Later, in 1770, a new Coadjutor of the Teutonic Order was appointed
Charles's favourite nephew, Maximilian. During the years that
followed, the bond between uncle and nephew was extremely close; and in
1775, when an equestrian statue of Charles was raised in Brussels,
Maximilian was again in attendance. The official unveiling of this
statue, which had been very precisely scheduled, was on January 17th'
the date of
Nicolas Flamel's first alchemical transmutation, of Marie de Blanchefort's tombstone, of
Sauniere's fatal stroke.
MAXIMILIAN DE LORRAINE. Born in 1756, Maximilian de Lorraine or
Maximilian von Habsburg was Charles de Lorraine's favourite nephew and
Maria
Theresa's youngest son. As a youth he had seemed destined for a military career, until a
fall from a horse left him crippled in one leg. As a result he turned his energies to the
Church, becoming, in 1784, bishop of Munster, as well as archbishop and imperial elector
of Cologne. On the death of his uncle, Charles, in 1780 he also became Grand Master of
the Teutonic Order.
In other respects, too, Maximilian followed in his uncle's footsteps.
Like
Charles be became an assiduous patron of the arts. Among his proteges
were
Haydn, Mozart and the young Beethoven. The latter even intended to dedicate the First
Symphony to him. By the time the work was finished and published, however, Maximilian
had died.
Maximilian was an intelligent, tolerant and easy-going ruler, beloved
by his subjects and esteemed by his peers. He seems to have epitomised
the ideal of the enlightened eighteenth-century potentate and was
probably one of the most cultured men of his age. In political matters
he appears to have been particularly lucid, and urgently sought to warn
his sister, Marie
Antoinette, of the storm then just beginning to gather in France. When the storm broke,
Maximilian did not panic. In fact, he seems to have been generally sympathetic to the
original objectives of the Revolution, while at the same time providing a haven for
aristocratic refugees.
Although Maximilian declared that he was not a Freemason, this
statement has often been questioned. Certainly he is widely suspected
465
of having belonged to one or another secret society despite his
position in the Church and Rome's vigorous prohibition of such activities. In any case he
is known to have openly consorted with members of the "craft' including, of course,
Mozart.
Like Robert Boyle, Charles Radclyffe and Charles de Lorraine,
Maximilian appears to reflect a certain pattern in the list of Sion's
alleged Gand
Masters a pattern which in fact extends back to the Middle Ages.
Like
Boyle, Radclyffe and his own uncle, Maximilian was a youngest son. The list of alleged
Grand Masters includes a number of younger or youngest sons many of whom appear in
lieu of more famous elder brothers.
Like Radclyffe and Charles de Lorraine, Maximilian kept a relatively
low profile, working quietly behind the scenes and acting assuming
Sion's
Grand Master acts at all through intermediaries and mouthpieces.
Radclyffe, for example, appears to have acted through the Chevalier Ramsay, then
through Hund. Charles de Lorraine would seem to have acted through his brother,
Franqois. And Maximilian seems to have acted through cultural figures, as well as
through certain of his own numerous siblings -Marie-Caroline, for instance, who, as queen
of Naples and Sicily, was largely responsible for the spread of Freemasonry in those
domains.
CHARLES NODIER. Born in 1780, Charles Nodier seems to inaugurate a
pattern that obtains for all Sion's alleged Grand Masters after the
French
Revolution. Unlike his predecessors he not only lacks noble blood, but seems to have
had no direct contact whatever with any of the families whose genealogies figure in the
"Prieure documents'. After the French Revolution the Prieure de Sion -or at least its
purported Grand Masters would appear to have been divorced both from the old
aristocracy and from the corridors of political power; or so, at any rate, our research led us
to conclude at the time.
Nodier's mother was one Suzanne Paris, who is said not to have known
her parents. His father was a solicitor in Besancon and, before the
Revolution, a member of the local Jacobite Club. After the outbreak of
the Revolution,
Nodier senior became Mayor of Besancon and President of the town's
Revolutionary Tribunal. He was also a highly esteemed Master Mason, in
466
the forefront of Masonic activity and politics at the time.
Charles Nodier displayed an extraordinary precocity, allegedly becoming involved in
among other things -cultural and political affairs at the age of ten! By the age of eighteen,
he had established a literary reputation and continued to publish prolifically for the rest of
his life, averaging a book a year. His work covers an impressively diverse spectrum travel
journals, essays on literature and painting, studies of prosody and versification, a study of
antennae in insects, an inquiry into the nature of suicide, autobiographical reminiscences,
excursions into archaeology, linguistics, legal questions and esoterica, not to mention a
voluminous corpus of fiction. Today Nodier is generally dismissed as a literary curiosity.
Although initially sympathetic to the Revolution, Nodier quickly turned
against it. He performed a similar volte face in his altitude
towards
Napoleon, and by 1802 was vociferous in his opposition to the emperor.
In that year he published, in London, a satirical poem, The Napoleone.
Having produced this seditious tract, he then, oddly enough, set about
calling attention to the fact that he had done so. The authorities at
first paid no attention to him, and Nodier seems to have gone
inordinately out of his way simply to get arrested. At last, after
writing a personal letter to
Napoleon in which he professed his guilt, he was imprisoned for a month, then sent back
to Besancon and kept under half-hearted surveillance.
Nevertheless, Nodier claimed later that he had continued to oppose the regime, becoming
involved in two separate plots against Napoleon, in 1804 and again in 1812. Although he
was given to boasting and bravado, this claim may not have been without substance.
Certainly he was friendly with the instigators of the two plots, whom he had met in
Besanqon during his youth.
VICTOR HuGO. Hugo's family was originally from Lorraine of
distinguished aristocratic descent, he later insisted -but he himself
was born in
Besanpon, that hotbed of subterranean subversive activity, in 1802.
His father was a general under Napoleon, but maintained very cordial
relations with the conspirators involved in the plot against the
emperor. One of these conspirators, in fact, was Madame Hugo's lover,
467
cohabiting with her in the same house and playing an important role in
her son's development, being the young Victor's godfather and mentor. Thus Hugo had
been exposed to the world of intrigue, conspiracy and secret societies from the age of
seven.
By the age of seventeen he was already a fervent disciple of Charles
Nodier; and it was from Nodier that he acquired his erudite knowledge
of
Gothic architecture, which figures so saliently in The Hunchback of
Notre
Dame. In 1819 Hugo and his brother established a publishing house in
conjunction with Nodier, and this house produced a magazine under
Nodier's editorial direction. In 1822 Hugo married in a special
ceremony at Saint
Sulpice. Three years later he and Nodier, with their wives, embarked on a prolonged
journey to Switzerland. In the same year, 1825, the two friends travelled together to
attend the coronation of Charles X. In the years that followed Hugo formed his own salon,
modelled on Nodier's and patronised by most of the same celebrities. And when Nodier
died in 1845 Hugo was one of the pallbearers at the funeral.
Like Newton, Hugo was a deeply religious man, but his religious views were highly
unorthodox. Like Newton, he was militantly anti-Trinitarian and repudiated Jesus's
divinity. As a result of Nodier's influence, he was immersed all his life in esoterica, in
Gnostic, Cabalistic and Hermetic thought a preoccupation that figures prominently in his
poetry and prose.
And he is known to have been connected with a so-call8d "Rose-Croix' order, which also
included Eliphas Levi and the young Maurice Barres.
Hugo's political attitudes have always been a source of perplexity to critics and historians,
and are too complex, too inconsistent, too contingent on other factors, to be discussed
here. We found it significant, however, that, despite his personal admiration for Napoleon,
Hugo was a staunch royalist, who welcomed the restoration of the old Bourbon dynasty.
Yet at the same time he seems to have regarded the Bourbons as
desirable only in a provisional way a kind of stop-gap measure. On the
whole, he appears to have despised them, and was particularly fierce in
his condemnation of Louis XIV. The ruler whom Hugo most
468
enthusiastically endorsed indeed, the two were close personal friends
was Louis-Philippe, the "Citizen King' elected to preside over a
popular monarchy. And Louis-Philippe was allied by marriage to the
house of Habsburg-Lorraine. His wife, in fact, was
Maximilian de Lorraine's niece.
CLAUDE DEBUSSY. Debussy was born in 1862; and though his family was
poor, he quickly established wealthy and influential contacts. While
still in his teens, he was performing as pianist in the chateau of the
French president's mistress, and seems to have become acquainted with
the head of state as well. In 1880 he was adopted by the Russian
noblewoman who had patronised
Tchaikovsky, and travelled with her to Switzerland, Italy and Russia. In 1884, after
winning a coveted musical prize, he studied for a time in Rome.
Between 1887 and 1906, he lived mostly in Paris, but the years preceding and following
this period were devoted to extensive travelling. These travels are known to have brought
him into contact with a number of eminent people.
We endeavoured to determine whether any of them were connected with the families
whose genealogies figure in the "Prieure documents', but our efforts, for the most part,
proved futile. Debussy, it transpired, was curiously secretive about his aristocratic and
political associates. Many of his letters have been suppressed; and in those that have
been published important names and often whole sentences have been scrupulously
excised.
Debussy seems to have made Hugo's acquaintance through the symbolist
poet,
Paul Verlaine. He later set a number of Hugo's works to music. During his time in Paris
he became an integral member of the symbolist circles, who dominated the cultural life of
the French capital. These circles were sometimes illustrious, sometimes odd, sometimes
both.
They included the young cleric, Emile Hoffet through whom Debussy came
to meet Berenger
Sauniere; Emma Calve, the esoteric ally oriented diva; the enigmatic
magus of French symbolist poetry, Stephane Mallarme one of whose
masterpieces,
L'Apres-Midi dun Faun, Debussy set to music the symbolist playwright,
Maurice Maeterlinck, whose drama, Pelleas et Melisande, Debussy turned
into a world-famous opera; and the flamboyant Comte Philippe Auguste
469
Villiers de 1 "Isle Adam who wrote the "RosicruciarY play, Axel. Although his death in 1918
prevented its completion, Debussy began to compose a libretto for Villiers's occult drama,
intending to turn it, too, into an opera. Among his other associates were the luminaries
who attended Mallarme's famous Tuesday night soirees Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, Paul
Valery, Andre Gide, Marcel Proust.
In themselves, Debussy's and Mallarme's circles were steeped in esoterica.
At the same time, they overlapped other circles that were more esoteric still. Thus
Debussy consorted with virtually all the most prominent names in the so-called "French
occult revival'.
JEAN COCTEAU. Born in 1889, Cocteau seemed to us a most unlikely candidate for the
Grand Mastership of an influential secret society.
But so, too, did some of the other names when we first encountered
them. For nearly all those other names certain relevant connections
gradually became apparent. In
Cocteau's case few such connections did.
It is worth noting, however, that Cocteau was raised in a milieu close to the corridors of
power his family was politically prominent and his uncle was an important diplomat.
Despite his subsequent bohemian existence, he never completely divorced himself from
these influential spheres.
Outrageous though his behaviour sometimes was, he retained close
contact with individuals highly placed in aristocratic and political
circles. Like many of Sion's alleged Grand Masters Boyle, Newton,
Debussy, for instance he appeared to remain sublimely aloof from
politics. During the German
Occupation he took no active part in the Resistance, but made apparent
his antipathy to the Petain regime. And after the war he seems to have
enjoyed considerable currency with de Gaulle, whose brother
commissioned him to deliver an important lecture on the state of
France. For us, the most convincing testimony of Cocteau's affiliation
with the Prieure de Sion resides in his work in the film Orphee, for
instance, in such plays as
The Eagle has Two Heads (based on the Habsburg Empress Elisabeth of
Austria) and in the decoration of such churches as Notre Dame de France
in
London. Most convincing of all, however, is his signature appended to
470
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the Holy Grail (London, 1909). WRITE, A. E." A New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry, 2
vols. (London, 1921).
WRITE, A. E." The Real History of the Rosicrucians (London, 1887).
WALKER, D. P." The Ancient Theology (London, 1972).
485
WALKER, D. P." Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella
(London, 1975). WALLACE-HA DRILL J. M." The Long-haired Kings (London, 1962).
WARD, J. S. M." Freemasonry and the Ancient Gods, 2nd edn (London, 1926).
WESTON, J. L" From Ritual to Romance (Cambridge, 1920). William, Count of Orange,
ed. Glanville Price (London, 1975).
WILLIAM of TYRE, A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, traps. Emily
Atwater
Babcock and A. C. Krey, 2 vols. (New York, 1943). WIND, E." Pagan Mysteries in the
Renaissance, rev. edn (Oxford, 1 980). WINTER, P." On the Trial of Jesus (Berlin, 1 961 ).
WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH, Parzival, traps. Helen M. Mustard and Charles E.
Passage (New York, 1961). WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH, Willehalm, traps. R. Fink
and F. Know (Jena, 1944). YATES, F. A." The Art of Memory (Harmondsworth, 1978).
YATES, F. A." Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London, 1978). YATES, F.
A." The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (St. Albans, 1975).
YATES, F. A." The Occult Philosophy in the. Elizabethan Age (London,
486
1979). ZUCKERMAN, A. J." A Jewish Princedom in Feudal France (New
York, 1972). Notes and References
Note
The full bibliographical details, when not cited here, are to be found in the Bibliography.
1 Village of Mystery
1 Gerard de Sede, L'Or de Rennes. Robert Charroux. Tresors du Monde
(Paris, 1962), pp. 247 ff. 2 Annuaire Ecclesiastique, p. 282. 3De
Side, L'Or de Rennes, p. 28. The painting was supposedly of "Saint
Antoine 1"Hermite'. De Sede himself said in conversation that the painting was the
"Temptation of Saint Anthony', but no one knew which one. Later our researches
indicated that it was in fact "Saint Anthony and Saint Jerome in the Desert'. 4Fe die Le
Comte de Razes, pp. 3 ff. The figure of 30,000 inhabitants is given by de Sede in L'Or de
Rennes, p. 17. He gives no source. 5 Procopius, History of the Wars, book v,xii. 6We
have twice had the relevant archives in the Vatican checked and on both occasions our
researchers reported that no reference to Sauniere could be found. There is not even any
record of his existence, a curious lacuna in the normally detailed Vatican records. It
suggests that all information regarding this priest has been extracted deliberately.
7Lepinois, "Lettres de Louis Fouquet', pp. 269 ff. The letter was kept in the archives of the
Cosse-Brissac family, who have been prominent in Freemasonry since the eighteenth
century.
8De laude Cercle d'Ulysse, p. 3. The author says that the tomb is cited
487
in a memoire by the Abbe Delmas dating from the seventeenth century. This work is
undoubtedly the memoire of Delmas dated 1709. This manuscript was originally deposited
with the Academie celtique, then vanished for some time. Earlier this century it
reappeared and part was published in Courrent, Notice historique, pp. 9-17. However,
this extract does not mention the tomb. It can only be supposed that the missing pieces
contain the information, but the Delmas manuscript is now in private possession in
Limoux, and has not been made available to us for reference.
2 The Cathars and the Great Heresy
1 1n 1888, while working at the Municipal Library of Orleans, Doinel
found a manuscript dating from 1022, written by a Gnostic who was later
in the same year burned at the stake. Reading this manuscript
converted Doinel into an avid Gnostic. See Lauth, "Tableau de 1'au
dela', pp. 212 ff. 2Manichaeans had long been involved in the use of
various forms of birth control, and were also accused of justifying
abortion. These practices were almost certainly part of the later
Cathar teaching. Noonan makes the point that the Church's condemnation
of contraception had been reaffirmed during its condemnation of the
Cathars. See Noonan, Contraception, p. 281,
Chadwick, Priscillian, p. 37. 3 De Rougement, Love in the Western
World, p. 78. 4ln A.D. 800 Manichaeans were still being condemned in
the West. In 991
Gerbert dAurillac, later Pope Sylvester II, expressed Manichaean beliefs.
See Runciman, The Medieval Manichee, p. 117, Niel, Les Cathars de Montsegur, pp. 26
ff. 5 Jean de Joinville, Life of Saint Louis, p.
174. 6 Niel, Les Cathars de Montsegur, pp. 291 ff. 7The Manichaeans
had a sacred festival called the Bema, which was celebrated during
March. Niel suggests that this was the festival held at Montsegur on
March 14th, adding that in 1244 the spring equinox fell on this date:
Niel,
Les Cathars de Montsegur, pp. 276 ff.
The Manichaeans apparently used a special book of drawings which
expressed
488
Mani's teachings, perhaps symbolically. It contained pictures
showing the dualism between the
Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. This book was used during the
Bema festival. Perhaps a similar book of symbols constituted part of
the Cathar treasure. See Ort, Mani, pp. 168 ff." 180 and 253 ff. 8A
survey of this type of speculation is to be found in Waite, Holy Grail,
pp. 524 ff. 9Nelli, Dictionnaire des heresies, pp. 216 ff. The
writer most involved with these types of connections was Otto Rahn,
author of Croisade cont re le
Graal , and La Cour de Lucifer. Otto Rahn claimed that the Grail castle
in
Wolfram von Eschenbach's Munsalvaesche is Montsegur. Rahn's books were
first published in German in the 1930s. Rahn himself joined the SS,
rising to the rank of Colonel. His researches into the Cathars and the
Grail had the support of Alfred Rosenberg, major racial philosopher,
spokesman for the
Nazi party and friend of Hitler. Rahn disappeared in 1939, allegedly
committing suicide on the peak of Mount Kufstein. However, a French
researcher has turned up several documents relating to Rahn, the
latest, dated 1945. See Bernadac, Le Mystere Otto Rahn. If these
documents indeed refer to the author Otto Rahn, it is interesting to
speculate whether he was behind the mysterious German excavations
carried out at Montsegur and other
Cathar sites during the Second World War.
3 The Warrior Monks
1 Runciman, History of the Crusades, vol. 2, p. 477. 2Esquieu, "Les
Payen was not born in Champagne but in the chateau of Mahun, near
Annonay in the lower Rhone valley (Ardeche). His birth record has been
found and the date of birth given is February 9th, 1070. Presumably he
later moved to
Champagne. 3William of Tyre, History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea,
vol. 1 , pp. 525 ff. 4 Addison, History of the Knights
489
Templars, p. 19. For a copy of the original rule see Curzon, La
Regie du Temple. 5 Addison, History of the Knights
Templars, p. 19. 6This date has been challenged, it has been argued that it must date
from no earlier than 1 152. 7King Richard I was a close friend of the Order, and lived with
them during his stay in Acre.
When he left the Holy Land in 1 1 92, he left disguised as a Templar,
setting sail in a Templar ship, and accompanied by four members of the
Order. See Addison, History of the Knights Templars, p. 148. 8Daraul,
History of Secret Societies, pp. 46 ff. Daraul neglects to supply a
source. 9See Piquet, Des Ranquiers au mo yen age. The initial
function was to facilitate the pilgrimage to the Holy Land. See also
Melville, Vie des
Templiers, pp. 87 ff. The first loan was recorded in 1135. Seward, The Monks of War, p.
213, says. "The Poor Knights' most lasting achievement, their contribution towards the
overthrow of the church's attitude to usury, was economic. No medieval institution did
more for the rise of capitalism."
Usury was prohibited, so the interest on loans was calculated beforehand and included in
the total amount borrowed. If land was used as collateral, the Templars received all the
income from this land until the full loan was repaid. 10 Melville, Vie des Templiers, p.
220. 1 1 See Mazieres, "La Venue et lese jour des
Templiers', p. 235. 12Blanche fort was destroyed during the
Albigensian Crusade, falling some time before 1215, at which date its
lands were given by Simon de Montfort to
Pierre de Voisins. The lord of Blanchefort had fought at the side of
Raymond-Roger Trencavel, the Cathar leader. See Fedie, Le Comte de Razes, p. 151.
Bertrand de Blanchefort himself, often in conjunction with the
earlier
Trencavel, was involved in donations of money and property to the
Templars. These transactions are recorded before he joined the Order,
while he was still married to his wife Fabrissa. See Albon, Cartulaire
general, p. 41 (Charter Lm 1 133-4). Mention of Bertrand's wife and his
490
two brothers, Arnaud and Raymond, can be found in the same work,
Charter cLx 1 1 38, p. 1 1 2. 1 3Mazieres, "La Venue et lese jour des
Templiers', pp. 243 ff. See also
Mazieres, "Recherches historiques', p. 276. A document found in the
archives of the Bruyeres and Mauleon family records how the Templars of
Campagne and
Albedune (Le Bezu) established a house of refuge for Cathar bon
hommes
This document and others disappeared during the war, sometime in November 1942.
14See for example Leonard, Introduction au cartulaire, p. 76. The preceptor of the
Temple at Toulouse at the beginning of the Albigensian Crusade was of the Cathar
Trencavel family. 1 50ne way that the Order could well have received advance warning of
the catastrophe was via jean de Joinville. He was seneschal of Champagne and so would
have received Philippe le Bel's secret orders to carry out the arrests.
He was known to be sympathetic to the Templars, and his uncle,
Andre, had been a member of the Order and preceptor of Payns in the
mysterious oath mentioning spitting on the cross, at the time that the
Templars were being accused of it. Furthermore he hinted very strongly
that Saint Louis knew of this fifty years before, and refused to
condemn it. (See jean de
Joinville, Life of Saint Louis, p. 254.) Jean organised a league of nobles to oppose the
excesses of the French king against the Temple.
The league was rendered superfluous by the king's death. 16When the
arresting officers, accompanied by the king himself, took the Paris
Temple in 1307, they found neither the money of the Order nor the documents.
The treasurer of the Order was Hugues de Peraud, and under him served Gerard de
Villers, the preceptor of France.
In 1308 seventy-two Templars were taken to Poitiers to give evidence
before the pope himself (the number of Templars is given in the Papal
Bull, Faciens misericord am Not all the depositions taken at the time
have survived. It is quite possible that many vanished when all the
491
Vatican secret archives, including all documents relating to the
Templars, were taken to Paris by order of Napoleon. Such was the chaos that
shopkeepers were found wrapping their goods in the precious documents.
Thirty-three depositions from Poitiers were published by the German
historian, Conrad Schottmiiller, in 1887, and a further seven by
Heinrich
Finke in 1907. In this last group there is a curious statement by a
jean de Chalons. He claimed that Gerard de Villers had foreknowledge
of the arrests, had fled the Temple accompanied by fifty knights and
gone to sea in eighteen galleys of the Order. He adds that Hugues de
Chalons had left with all the treasure of Hugues de Peraud cum toto
thesauro fratris
Hugonis de Peraudo. This, he said when questioned, had remained secret because those
Templars who knew of it feared they would be killed if they spoke. See Finke, Papsttum
and Untergang des Templerordens, vol. ii, p. 339.
were arrested that dawn, certain had not been present and were captured
a few days later. Among the small group caught later were Gerard de
Villers and Hugues de Chalons. See Barber, M." Trial of the Templars, p. 46. 17This
story is reported by Waite, New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry, vol. 2, p. 223. 18
Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, p.
251 . 1 9Shah, The Sufis, p. 225. See also the introduction to Shah's
book by Robert
Graves, who on p. xix, explains the play on words linking black with
wise in
Arabic. Graves claims that the three black heads on the family shield
of
Hugues de Payen are such a device with a dual meaning. 20 Oursel, Le
Proces des Templiers, p. 208. 21Lobineau. H." Dossiers secrets,
planche no. 4, Ordre de Sion, gives a quote from p. 292 of the Livre
des constitutions (of the Ordre de Sion) where the head is called CAPUT
LVIII ll~ Head 58 Virgo. 22This version is from Ward, Freemasonry and
the Ancient Gods, p. 305. 23Roger de Hoveden, Annals, vol. n pp. 248
492
ff. For a detailed discussion of the Yse stories see Barber, M.,
Trial of the Templars, pp. 1 85 ff. He does not consider that the story has any relevance
to the history of the Templars, suggesting it was a fragment of common folklore used as a
weapon against the Order. 24Barber, M." Trial of the Templars, p. 249. The list is
abridged.
25Miche let Proces des Templiers, vol. II, p. 384, deposition of jean
de
Chaumes. 26Schottmiiller, Der Untergang des Tempter-Ordens, vol. Ill,
p. 67, deposition of Deodatus Jefet. 27Miche let Proces des Templiers,
pp. 383 ff, deposition of Fink de Troyes. 28Jean de Joinville, Life
of Saint Louis, p. 254. See also eh. 3, n. 15. 29Alban, Cartulaire
general, p. 2 (Charter III, 1 125) mentions a Templar named
Roberti who could possibly have been the Robert who became Grand Master after the
death of Hugues de Payen. On p. 3 (Charter iv 1 1 25) there is mention of Templars
Henrico et Roberto. This then adds two names to Fink d'Anjou and Hugues de
Champagne, making at least four recruits.
30Bouquet, Recueil des Historiens, vol. 15 (Epistolae Ivonis
Carnotensis
Episcopi), p. 162, no. 245. 31 "The mi lice du Christ, the evangelical soldiery in this letter
is none other than the Order of the Temple. But in 1 1 14 the Order of the Temple was not
yet established.. ."
Arbois de Jubainville, Flistoire .. . de Champagne, vol. ti, pp. 113-14, n. 1. 32The school
was founded by the famous medieval Rabbi, Rashi (1040-1 105). 33 Allegro, Treasure of
the Copper Scroll, pp. 107 ff. 34Arbois de Jubainville, Histoire .. . de Champagne, vol. ii,
pp.
87 ff. 35 Ibid." pp. 98 ff." n. 1. 36Personal communication to
Henry Lincoln by Abbe Mazieres. 37Arcons, Du Flux et reflux, pp. 355
ff. See also Catel, Memoires .. . du
Languedoc, book I, p. 51 . 38Mazieres, "La Venue et lese jour des
Templiers', pp. 234 ff. 39Personal communication to Henry Lincoln by
493
Abbe Mazieres. 4 Secret Documents
1 Descadeillas, Rennes et ses derniers seigneurs. 2See Descadeillas, "Mythologie', and
de Sede, Le Vrai Dossier. 3 Paoli, Les des sous p. 86. 4Le Monde (Feb. 21st, 1967), p.
11. Le Monde (Feb. 22nd, 1967), p. 11.
Paris-Jour (Feb. 21st, 1967), no. 2315, p. 4. 5Feugere, Saint-Maxent and Koker, Le
Serpent rouge, p. 4.
5 The Order Behind the Scenes
1 Grousset, Histoire des croisades, vol. m, p. xiv. 2 Vogiie, Les
Eglises, p. 326. 3 Vincent, Histoire de 1'anciene image, pp. 92 ff. 4
Rohricht. Regesta, p. 19, no. 83. 5 Ibid." p. 25, no. 105. 6
Tilliere, Histoire .. . d'Orval, pp. 3 ff. 7Jean ting Les Chroniques,
vol. 1 , p.398. In Hagenmeyer's Le Vrai et le faux sur Pierre
1"Hermite, it is claimed that before becoming a monk Peter was a minor
noble, owning the fief of Acheres near Amiens and was a vassal of
Eustache de Boulogne, Godfroi's father. See pp. 58 ff. Hagenmeyer, however, does not
accept that Peter was the tutor of Godfroi.
Peter obviously had considerable prestige, for after the taking of
Jerusalem the crusading army embarked on another campaign leaving Peter
in charge of the city. 8William of Tyre, History of Deeds Done Beyond
the Sea, vol. 1 , p. 380. See also Runciman, History of the Crusades,
vol. 1,p. 292. This same bishop from Calabria was q friend of one
Arnulf, a very minor ecclesiastic, who, with the help of the bishop,
was later elected the first Latin Patriarch of
Jerusalem!
A strange group survived from the earlier "people's crusade' called
Tafurs, who earned a certain notoriety when some of their members were
accused of cannibalism by the emir of Antioch. Of this group there was
an inner "college' presided over by a King Tafur. The contemporary
494
495
approached with humility, even reverence. It was this King Tafur who is said to have
performed the coronation of Godfroi de Bouillon. Moreover, King Ta fur was said to be
associated with Peter the Hermit.
Could it be possible that this inner group, and the king, were the
representatives from Calabria? The name
Tafur, could, with one letter change, be an anagram for Artus, a ritual name. For a
summary of the influence of the Tafurs see Cohn, N." Pursuit of the Millennium, pp. 66 ff.
9 Lobineau, H." Dossiers secrets, planche no. 4. 10 Ibid. 1 1 Archives du Loiret, serie D.
357.
See-also Rey, E.-G.. "Chartes .. . duMont-Sion', pp. 31 ff." and Le
Maire, Histoire et Antiquitez, part 2, eh. xxvl, pp. 96 ff. 1 2
Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment. 13See for example Yates, Giordano
Bruno, pp. 312 ff." and Yates, Occult
Philosophy, p. 38. In both these works Frances Yates explores the transmission of
Hermetic thought and the secret societies which grew up around the central figures
involved. 14We have this information from "Prieure' sources. We have seen the
manuscript in question at the Bibliotheque de Rouen, Histoire polytique de Gisors et du
pays de Vulcsain by Robert Denyau, 1629 (Collection Montbret 2219, V 14a).
There are major difficulties in verifying the information. Of some 575 hand-written pages,
the majority are barely legible and many pages are missing, while others have been cut,
or had sections removed or deleted.
Only the Calendarium Martyrology is clearly legible. 15 Rohricht, Regesta, p. 375, no.
1440. 16 Bruel, Chartes d'Adam, pp. Iff. 17 Lobineau, H." Dossiers secrets, planche
no. 4. 18 Oursel, Le Proces des Templiers, p. 208. 19 Rey, E.-G." Chartes .. . duMont-
Sion, pp.
34 ff. 20lt is perhaps worth comparing the given lists of Grand
Masters of the
Knights Templar.
A The list as given in Henri Lobineau, Dossiers secrets:
496
Hugues de Payen, 1 1 1 8-31 Robert de Bourgogne, 1 1 31 -50
Bernard de Tremblay, 1 1 50-53
Bertrand de Blancafort, 1153-70
Janfeders Fulcherine, 1170-71 ( = Gaufridus Fulcherius/Geoffroy Foucher)
Frangois Othon de St. Amand, 1171-9
Theodore de Glaise, 1 179-84 ( = Theodoricus/Terricus)
FranQois Gerard de Riderfort, 1 1 84-90
BThe list as given in a modern source Seward, Monks of War, p. 306.
Hugues de Payen, 1 1 1 8-36 Robert de Craon, 1 1 36-46 Everard des Barres,
1 146-52 Bernard de Tremelai, 1 152-3 Andre de Montbard, 1 153-6
Bertrand de Blanquefort, 1 156-69 Philippe de Milly, 1 1fi9-70
Eudes de St. Amand, 1 1 70-9 Arnold de Torroge, 1 1 79-85 Gerard de
Ridefort, 1185-91
It is worth reviewing a specimen of the evidence which supports the Prieure list, using the
first Grand Master as an example.
The date of death for Hugues de Payen differs. The Prieure list puts
it at 1 131 , while the modern list claims 1 136. This latter date cannot
be proved and, in fact, would appear to be wrong. 1 136 is given in
L'Art de verifier les dates, vol .5 (Paris, 1 818), p.338 and the
normally stated day of death,
May 24th, is given in the thirteenth-century Obituaire de la command
erie . de Reims (see Barthelemy), p. 321. However, this early
document does not give any year of death. So scholars have been
dependent upon the surviving charters signed by Hugues de Payen. These
charters indicate that in fact Hugues did die around 1 131 , or shortly
thereafter. In Alban,
Cartulaire general, several charters are given which have been signed
by
Hugues. He uses his full name, generally given as Hugo de Pagano. The
last charter signed in this way is dated 1 130 (Albon, Cartulaire
497
general, pp. 23 ff.). It would appear likely that he died some time
following this date and before 1 133, the year in which a charter appeared mentioning, but
not signed by, Hugoni, magis tro militum ... Templi (Albon, Cartulaire general, p. 42). This
charter has generally been attributed to Hugues de Payen, but it seems more likely that it
is in fact referring to Hugues Rigaud, who appears in many other charters reproduced by
M. dAlbon, and indeed, is now considered to have been the common master of Saint-
Sepulchre and the Temple, or the Temple in Jerusalem, from 1 130 to 1 133. See Gerard
and Magnou, Cartulaire, p. xxxviii. So the Prieure list appears to have the evidence in its
favour.
It should also be noted that at no point does William of Tyre ever
list
Everard des Barres or Andre de Montbard as Grand Masters of the
Knights
Templar -which subsequent historians, on a highly questionable basis, do.
6 The Grand Masters and the Underground Stream
ILobineau, H." Dossiers secrets, planche no. 4, Ordre de Sion. 2Loyd,
Origins of Anglo-Norman Families, pp. 45 ff. And Powicke, Loss of
Normandy, p. 340. 3Roger de Hoveden, Annals, vol. 1 , p. 322. It reads, "Thomas, the
archbishop of Canterbury, and some of his fellow-exiles, came to an interview with the
legates, on the octave of Saint Martin, between Gisors and Trie .. ." This meeting-place
between the two adjacent castles is the site of the famous elm tree which was later cut
down. In his Voyages Pittoresques (Normandy, vol. 2, p.
138) Charles Nodier says that "St. Thomas de Canterbury had there
(under the Gisors elm) prepared for his martyrdom." It is unclear
exactly what he is implying here but it is provocative. 4Lecoy de la
Marche, Le Roi Rene, vol. t, p. 69. The duke of Lorraine had no son,
and by the conventions of the times it was to Rene that Jeanne was
referring. 5 See Staley, King Rene d'Anjou, pp. 153 ff. 6Staley,
498
King Rene d'Anjou, p. 29. Rene himself carved the inscription. 7Sir
Philip Sidney was an associate of John Dee and also steeped in Hermetic
thought. Frances Yates considers John Dee to be the source of the
Rosicrucian manifestos Yates, Occult Philosophy, pp. 170 ff. For further information on
Sidney and Dee see French. John Dee. Sidney then was well aware of the "underground
stream' flowing through European culture. 8AII the manifestos are printed in Waite, Real
History of the Rosicrucians. 9 Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment, p.
125. 10 Ibid." p. 192. 11 Some letters exist, which are held by the
Royal Society, written to Robert
Boyle regarding a group called the Sacred Cabalistic Society of
Philosophers who admitted him as a member. It appears to be based in
France. See
Maddison, Life of .. . Robert Boyle, pp. 166 ff. 12Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment, pp.
223 ff. Frances Yates explains the connecting links between the Rosicrucian movement
and the Royal Society. 13For further information on Ramsay see Walker, The Ancient
Theology, pp. 231 ff." and Henderson, Chevalier Ramsay. 14The text of the Oration is
published in Gould, History of Freemasonry, vol. 5, pp. 84 ff.
15Waite, New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry, vol. 2, pp. 353 ff." and
Le
Forestier, La Franc-Magonnerie, pp. 126 ff. 16This list is reproduced in Thory, Acta
Latomorum, vol. 2, p. 282. The list follows Sion's list only until the split in 1188. The
Grand Master at that time was Gerard de Ridefort. 17Nodier, Voyages Pittoresques,
Normandy, vol.2, pp. 137 ff. 18 Pingaud, La]eunesse de Charles Nodier, p. 39. 19lbid."
pp. 231 ff." contains the rules of the society. Some are curious.
Rule 1 8 states, "The brothers of the Society of the Philadelphes have a
particular liking for the colour sky-blue, the figure of the pentagram
499
and the number 5." 20 Ibid." p. 47. 21 Nodier, Contes, pp. 4 ff.
22 Nodier, History of Secret Societies, p. 105. 23 Ibid." p. 116.
24The most significant figure in secret societies of the period was
Filippo
Michele Buonarroti (a descendant of Michelangelo's brother) who began
his career as a page to the archduke of Tuscany (son of Franqois de
Lorraine) and became involved in Freemasonry. At the outbreak of the
French Revolution he went to Corsica, where he stayed until 1794 and
became acquainted with
Napoleon. From the early 1800s he set up a succession of secret societies.
He founded so many that historians have no idea of the actual number
founded. One comments that "Buonarroti was a true divinity, if not
omnipotent at least omnipresent', Eisenstein, The First Professional
Revolutionist .. . Buonarroti, p. 48, quoting Lehning. He shared many
mutual friends with Nodier and Hugo Petrus-Borel, Louis Blanc,
Celestin
Nanteuil, Jehan Duseigneur, Jean Gigoux, so it is most likely that they
knew each other. In fact the absence of any record of them meeting is
highly suspicious, given the status which Buonarroti commanded later in
his life in
Paris.
See also Roberts, Mythology of the Secret Societies, pp. 233 ff." "for thirty years without'
ever stopping, like a spider in his hole, spinning the threads of a conspiracy that all the
governments have broken, each in turn, and that he never tires of renewing."
Eisenstein, The First
Professional Revolutionist .. . Buonarroti, p. 51.
It is most likely that Buonarroti and Nodier were both in the Prieure
de
Sion especially as one of Buonarroti's organisations was the
Philadelphes, the same name Nodier used for his order. 25 See Chapter
7, n. 33. 26Lucie-Smith, Symbolist Art, p. 1 10. For Peladan's life
and associates see
Pincus-Witten, Occult Symbolism in France. 27 Lucie-Smith, Symbolist
Art, p. 111. 28This was his comment when asked to do the painting
which now forms part of a chapel in the church of Notre Dame de France,
London. 29See Bander, Prophecies of St. Malachy, p. 93. The Latin
phrase is Pastor et
500
Nauta the word nauta, can mean either "seaman' or "navigator', which
in old French is "nautonnier'. 30"lnde a primis' published in
L'Osservatore Romano (July 2nd, 1960), p. 1. An
English translation can be found in Review for Religious, vol. 20 (1961), pp. 3 ff.
7 Conspiracy through the Centuries
ILobineau, H." Dossiers secrets, planche no. 4, Ordre de Sion. 2De Sede, Les
Templiers, pp. 220 ff. For the story of Lhomoy see de Sede, pp. 20 ff. and 231 ff. See
also Chaumeil, Triangle d'or, pp. 1 9 ff . 3Le Maire, Histoire et Antiquitez, part 2, eh. xxvl,
pp. 96 ff. 4The cardinal of Lorraine was behind the amnesty in favour of Huguenots given
at Amboise on March 7th, 1560. The cardinal also secretly gave money to certain
Protestant groups. 5lt was through Rene d'Anjou that the double-barred cross became
associated with Lorraine. Rene had adopted this cross as his emblem, using it on his
seals and coinage.
The popularity of the cross dates from its use by Rene
II, duke of Lorraine, at the battle of Nancy in 1477. See Marot, Le
Symbolisme, pp. 1 ff. 6Nostradamus moved in circles connected with
the house of Lorraine. He lived for some years in Agen, and jean de
Lorraine was bishop of Agen at the time, as well as head of the
Inquisition in France. Research indicates that
Nostradamus received warning of the Inquisition's interest in him, and
all factors point to jean, cardinal of Lorraine having been the source
of that warning. Moreover Nostradamus's friend Scaliger in Agen was a
friend of the cardinal and also acquainted with the Hermeticist and
creator of the "Memory
Theatre', Giulio Camino (see Yates, Art of Memory, eh. 6). The
cardinal of
Lorraine was well acquainted with Camino. Also two court poets, Pierre
de
Ronsard and Jean Dorat, were friends of Nostradamus. Ronsard wrote
several poems in praise of Nostradamus and the cardinal. The cardinal
501
supported both these poets. It was jean Dorat who sent Jean-Aime de
Chavigny to Nostradamus as his secretary. Much research into these
connections is presented in the novel The Dreamer of the Vine, by Liz
Greene (London, 1979). 7Quatrain v: 74, for example, relates probably
to Charles Martel driving back the Saracens, and beating them at the
battle of Poitiers in 732. Quatrain
III: 83 may well refer to the long-haired Merovingian kings taking the
kingdom of Aquitaine, which they did after 507. Many of the quatrains
and presages mention the Rases which seems to be a pun both on the area
of the
Razes and the exiled Counts, the "shaven ones', the Merovingian
descendants. 8De Sede, La Race fabuleuse, pp. 106 ff. De Sede's
credibility in this book tends to be somewhat undercut by his rather
unlikely claim that the
Merovingians were extraterrestrials! In conversation he was asked the source for his
assertion that Nostradamus spent time at Orval. He replied that a man named Eric
Muraise had a manuscript proving this, which de Sede had personally viewed.
We questioned some of the monks at the Abbey of Orval about the possibility of
Nostradamus having been there. They shrugged, and said it was a tradition, but they had
no evidence either to prove or disprove it:
It was possible, one said wearily. 9Allier, La Cabale, pp. 99 ff. The author states that it
was the Compagnie which suggested to Olier that he found Saint Sulpice. 1 0 Allier, La
Cabale, p. 33. 11 Auguste, La Compagnie ... d Toulouse, pp. 20 ff. 12 Allier, La Cabale,
p. 3. 13Lobineau, H." Dossiers secrets, planche no. 1, 1100-1600, n." planche no. 19,
1800-1900. 14 Sainte-Marie, Recherches historiques, p. 243. 15Soul trait (ed.),
Dictionnaire topographique .. . de la Nievre, pp. 8, 146.
The hamlet of Les Plantards was near to Semelay, later the birthplace
of jean XXII des Plantard. 16See the Bulletin de la societe nivernais
des lettres, sciences et arts, 2eme serie, tome vll (1 876), pp. 1 1 0,
139,140-41,307. See also Chaumeil,
502
Triangle d'or, pp. 80 ff. and illustrations of coins discovered on
the site. 1 7These are examples of the factors which have led subsequent authors to
regard Fouquet as being the likely candidate for the Man in the Iron Mask.
Much persuasive evidence exists to support the assertion. 18 Blunt,
Poussin, vol. I, p. 170. 19This painting is illustrated in Ward,
Freemasonry and the Ancient Gods, facing p. 134. It is in the
possession of the Supreme Grand Royal Arch
Chapter of Scotland, Edinburgh. 20 Delaude, Cercle d'Ulysse, p. 3.
21 Gout, Mont-Saint-Michel, pp. 141 ff. Robert de Torigny, Abbe
1 1 54-86, wrote some 1 40 volumes during his life, a large number of
which were dedicated to the history of the region. During his rule the
number of monks at the abbey doubled and it became a "sanctuary of
science'. He was a close friend of both Henry II and Becket and, given
their close association with the Prieure de Sion, the Templars and
Gisors, it would be surprising if Robert were not also au fait with
them. If the Plantard family did indeed use the motto as suggested,
one would expect Robert to have recorded it, since the Plantard family
not only seem to have been resident in Brittany at the time, but jean
VI des Plantard in 1 156 (according to Henri Lobineau) married Idoine
de
Gisors, the sister of Jean de Gisors, Ninth Grand Master of the Ordre
de
Sion, founder of the Ordre de la Rose-Croix. History records Idoine, but not her husband
which does not allow us to find which title the Plantard family were using in the twelfth
century.
We were not able to find any mention of the Plantard family, nor any trace of Robert's
genealogical surveys. His manuscripts have been scattered but lists of them exist, though
none of them includes obviously genealogical material. We were later told that the
relevant manuscript was in the "private' archives of Saint Sulpice, Paris. Hardly a
satisfactory ending to this line of investigation. 22Myriam, "Los Bergers d'Arcadie', in Le
Charivari, no. 18, pp. 49 ff. 23 Thory, Acta Latomorum, vol. 2, pp. 15 ff.
503
Gould, History of Freemasonry, vol. 2, p. 383. 24 Erdeswick, A
Survey of Staffordshire, p. 189. 25Peyrefitte, "La Lettre Secrete',
pp. 197ff. The letter in question was attached to a Bull of
Excommunication issued by the pope on April 28th, 1738. 26The Oriental
Rite of Memphis first appeared in 1838, when Jacques Etienne
Marconis de Negre established the Grand Lodge Osiris in Brussels. The
underlying legend of the Rite was that it descended from the Dionysian
and
Egyptian mysteries. The sage Ormus is said to have combined the
mysteries with Christianity to produce the original Rose-Croix. The
Oriental Rite of
Memphis was a system of ninety-seven degrees, producing such august
titles as Commander of the Luminous Triangle, Sublime Prince of the
Royal Mystery,
Sublime Pastor of the Hutz, Doctor of the Planispheres, and so on.
See
Waite, New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry, vol. 2, pp. 241 ff. The
Rite was eventually reduced' to thirty-three degrees, calling itself
the Ancient and
Primitive Rite. It was taken to the United States circa 1854-6 by H.
J. Seymour, and to England in 1 872 by John Yarker. It was later
associated with the Ordo Templi Orientis. The magazine of the Rite of
Memphis, the
Oriflamme, advertised the O. T. O. in its issues. In 1875 the Rite was
amalgamated with the Rite of Misraim. In History of the Ancient and
Primitive Rite of Masonry (London, 1875) the Rite of Memphis is said to derive from that of
the Philadelphians of Narbonne, established in 1779. 27See also Genesis 28:18, where
Jacob anoints a stone pillar.
28Pitois, as librarian to the Ministry of Public Education, was given
the task of sorting through all the books from the monasteries and
provincial libraries brought to Paris. He and Charles Nodier pored
over them, and claimed to have made interesting discoveries daily. 29
jean-Baptiste Hogan. 30lt is quite possible that the doctrine of papal
infallibility, formally stated for the first time on July 18th, 1870,
was part of the Roman Catholic church's reaction to Modernist
tendencies, as well as to Darwinian thought and the increasing
504
continental power of Lutheran Prussia. 31 Iremonger, William Temple,
p. 490. 32A short biography of Hoffet is given in Descadeillas, Mythologie, pp. 85 ff.
Hoffetwas born at Schiltigheim, Alsace on May 11th, 1873. In 1884 he
began his studies in Paris at the Maitrise de Montmartre, later
continuing them at the Petit Seminaire de Notre-Dame de Sion, where he
prepared to enter the
Church. He began his novitiate at Saint-Gerlach in Holland and entered
the religious Order of Oblats de Marie in 1892. At Liege he was
ordained as spriest in 1898. He worked then as a missionary, firstly
in Corsica then back in France. In 1903-4 he was in Rome. He returned
to Paris to live in 1 914, and died there in March 1 946. He wrote
prolifically, particularly for specialist magazines on religious
history. He was a linguist, fluent in
Greek, Hebrew and Sanskrit. De Sede, Le Vrai Dossier, pp. 33 ff."
reports that Descadeillas, while publicly disparaging any idea of a
"mystery' at
Rennes, nevertheless in 1966 wrote to the authorities of the Oblats de
Marie to ask whether there was any proof that Hoffet ever preached in
Rennes-leChateau. De Sede reports that the archivist of Hoffet's Order
wrote, "Hoffet is the author of some very interesting studies on
Freemasonry, of which he had made a particular study, and I have
unearthed a number of his manuscripts .. . I have ordered that the
particularly interesting documents be placed in security." See also
Chaumeil, Triangle d'or, pp. 106 ff. 33Pa pus was born in Spain on
July 13th, 1865. In 1887 he joined the
Theosophical Association but in 1888 left to found his own group on
Martinist principles. In the same year he was one of the founding
members of the Ordre Kabbalistic de la Rose-Croix, along with Peladan
and Stanislas de
Guaita. In 1 889, together with these two and Villiers de 1 "Isle-Adam
he founded the review L'lnitiation. In 1891 a "supreme council' of
the
Martinist Order was formed in Paris with Papus as Grand Master. At about this time
Papus helped Doinel found the Gnostic Catholic Church.
In 1895
Doinel withdrew, leaving the church in the care of Papus and two
others, under the jurisdiction of a patriarch. Doinel then went to
Carcassonne. This same year Papus became a member of the Order of the
505
Golden Dawn, in the Paris lodge Ahathoor. During the 1890s Papus was
a friend of Emma Calve. In 1 899 one of his close friends, Philippe de Lyon, went to
Russia and established a Martinist lodge at the imperial court. In 1900 Papus himself
went to St. Petersburg, where he became a confidant of the czar and czarina. He visited
Russia on at least three occasions, the last being in 1906. During this time he made the
acquaintance of Rasputin.
Papus later became Grand Master in France of the Ordo Templi Orientis and the lodge of
Memphis and Misraim. He died on October 25th, 1916.
34NN us Protocols. This work had, by the 1960s, been through some
eighty-three editions which would tend to suggest that anti-Semitism is
rife in Great Britain. The publishing company, Britons Publishing (now
part of
Augustine Publishing, a Catholic traditionalist press) also had such
titles as Jews' Ritual Slaughter (price 3d), Jews and the White Slave
Traffic (price 2d). 35For the history of the Protocols see Cohn,
Warrant for Genocide, and
Bernstein, Truth about "The Protocols', which reproduces in full translations of the various
suggested sources for the Protocols. The standard anti- Semitic history is detailed in Fry,
Waters Flowing Eastward.
This is a controversial document by any standards. It gives, amongst other things, a
photograph "proving' that Czar Nicolas II was killed in ritual murder by a Jewish Cabalist!
To see this type of il literature still being published in 1965 is somewhat disconcerting. 36
Nilus, Protocols, no. 13. 37 Lodge of Memphis and Misraim. See n. 33.
38NN us Protocols, no. 24. This statement does not appear in some
earlier editions of the Protocols. 39 Nilus, Protocols, no. 24. 40
Blancasall, Les Descendants, p. 6. 41 See the preface by Pierre Plantard
de Saint-Clair in the 1978 Belfond reprint of Boudet, La Vraie Longue
celtique. 42 Chaumeil, Triangle d'or, p. 136. 43 See Rosnay, Le
506
Hieron du Val d'Or. 44 Chaumeil, Triangle d'or, pp. 139 ff. 8 The
Secret Society Today
1 Philippe de Cherisey, an associate of Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair,
has written an allegorical "novel' called Circuit. The subject matter
ranges from Atlantis to Napoleon. It has twenty-two chapters, each
taking its title from one of the Tarot major trumps. It exists in a
single example at the
Versailles annexe of the Bibliotheque Nationals, Paris. Part involves the story of two
symbolic personages, Chariot and Madeleine, who find a treasure at Rennes-leChateau.
See Chaumeil, Triangle d'or, pp. 141 ff. for this extract. ZPrieure de Sion: Statutes,
Articles xi and xn.
Received by the
Sous-Prefecture, Saint-Julien-en-Genevois, May 7th, 1956. File number KM 94550. 3
Midi Libre (Feb. 13th, 1973), p. 5. 4Myriam, "Les Bergers d'Arcadie', Le Charivari, no. 18,
pp. 49 ff. 5 Contained in Henri Lobineau, Dossiers secrets, p. 1. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8Roux,
S."
L'Affaire de Rennes-leChateau. In another part of the Dossiers
secrets, a page written by one Edmond Albe, S. Roux is identified as
the
Abbe Georges de Nantes. In his book Mathieu Paoli claims (Les Dessous,
p. 82) the same identification. Georges de Nantes is the head of the
"Catholic
Counter Reformation in the XXth Century', and also author of the sustained attack on
Pope Paul VI, Liber Accusationis in Paulum Sextum.
In this he accuses Pope Paul of being an heretic. He would seem in
fact to be in much the same camp as M. Lefebvre. Intrigued that this
identification appeared to be uncontested, we wrote to Abbe Georges de
Nantes, giving him the quote from Paoli's book, requesting comments,
and asking whether he would confirm or deny M. Paoli's assertion. The
Abbe de Nantes wrote back, saying that he gets asked from time to time
for explanations concerning this text and he could only repeat that he
has nothing to do with S. Roux. Moreover, he added, "Such a text is a
507
true tissue of absurdities. How could you take it seriously?" 9
Roux, L'Af fairede Rennes-le-C:hfiteau, p. 1. 10 Ibid." p. 2. 11
Ibid. 12 Delaude, Cercle d'Ulysse, p. 6 (v ). 13 Guardian (London,
Sept. 11th, 1976), p. 13. 14Mgr Brunon, who replaced Lefebvre as
bishop of Tulle, said that in his opinion Lefebvre was being
manipulated by others. See the Guardian (London,
Sept. 1st, 1976), p. 4. Gianfranco Svidercoschi, described by The Times as being "an
experienced and usually well informed Vatican correspondent', declared the Pope to be
aware that "Mgr Lefebvre was being conditioned surreptitiously by other people'. See The
Times (London, Aug. 31st, 1976), p. 12. 15Guardian (Aug. 30th, 1976), p.
1 6. Intrigued by this, we wrote to Father
Peter Morgan, asking him if he would clarify this matter. Father Morgan did not reply.
16We have a copy only of the article, with no source acknowledged, so there is no way of
determining which magazine. 1 70ur latest information is that they are now back in
France. 18 Le Charivari, no. 18, pp. 56 ff. 19The old statutes were registered with the
Sub Prefecture on May 7th, 1956.
According to the second issue of Circuit dated June 3rd, 1956, a meeting was held that
week to discuss statutes. The statutes bearing Cocteau's signature are dated June 5th,
1956. 20 Bonne Soiree, no.
3053 (Aug. 14th, 1980), p. 14. 21 We have, during the writing of this
book, consulted a large number of works dealing with the genealogies of
noble families, both ancient and contemporary. We have never found a
single reference to the title Plantard de Saint-Clair. However, this
failure to find his name doesn't invalidate the claim, especially since
he admits it to have been clandestine for centuries. 22 Le Charivari,
no. 18, p. 60, Gisors et son secret. 23M. de Sede's major work, Les
Templiers sont par mi nous, contains a section at the back entitled,
"Point de vue dun esotericiste'. This section consists of a lengthy
interview with Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair in which de Sede not only
508
poses a multitude of questions but also acknowledges Plantard as a
seemingly definitive authority. M. Plantard also seems to have been
involved in de Sede's book on Rennes-leChateau. During the making of
the film The Lost Treasure of
Jerusalem? for the BBC, we received from de Sede's publishers a mass
of visual material which had been used in the book. All the
photographs were stamped "Plantard' on the reverse. This would suggest
that this material had presumably been in Plantard's possession and he
had entrusted it to de
Sede. 24 Le Charivari, no. 18, p. 55. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid." p. 53.
27We received from M. Plantard a photocopy of a legally certified
deposition by a named member of the Legion d'Honneur and officer in the
French
Resistance during the Second World War. It states that Pierre Plantard
clandestinely produced the resistance journal Vaincre from 1 941 . It
furthermore states that M. Plantard was imprisoned by the Gestapo at
Fresnes from October 1943 until February 1944. This deposition is
stamped and dated
May 11th, 1953.
Checking this did not prove to be a straightforward task. Firstly
there were many journals named Vaincre published by various resistance
groups during the war. However, the magazine involved would seem to be
the
Vaincre issued by the Comite Local du Front National de Lutte pour 1 "In
dependance de la France, a copy of which is in the Bibliotheque
Nationale, Paris, dated April 1943. It was produced in Saint-Cloud,
Paris.
We wrote to the historical service of the French Army asking for
details on the resistance activities of M. Plantard. We received a
letter from the French Ministry of Defence informing us that this
information was personal and confidential. 28See Vazart, Abrege de
1'histoire des Francs, pp. 271, 272, nn. 1 and 2. The latter note
contains the text of the letter from General de Gaulle. 29This
information came from jean-Luc Chaumeil, in conversation with him. We
sought to check on M. Paoli, beginning with Swiss television, as we
509
knew he had worked for them at the time he wrote his book. The
administrative chief of Radio-Television Suisse Romande told us that M.
Paoli had left in 1971.
He was said to have gone to Israel and worked for Israeli television at
Tel
Aviv. The trail unfortunately ended here. 30 Paoli, Les Dessous, p. 86. 31 The copies of
Circuit, some of which are available at the Versailles Annexe, are a prime example of the
obscure manner in which the story has been made available.
The first series of Circuit begins on May 27th, 1956, and runs weekly
until a special edition which follows issue number 1 1 and is dated
September 2nd, 1956. The magazines are mimeographed and generally
consist of two to four pages. They issue from SousCassan, Annemasse,
and each has an introduction by Pierre Plantard. Many contain the
minutes of the meetings held to discuss the drawing up and registration
of the statutes of the Prieure de Sion with the Sub-Prefecture at
Annemasse, though the name of the Prieure is not mentioned once. In
fact, the ostensible concern of all the issues of the magazine is
low-cost housing. The organisation behind the magazine is not called
the Prieure de Sion, but the Organisation for the Defence of the Rights
and the Liberty of Low-Cost Homes! (A certain sense of humour pervades
many of the Prieure documents.) At the same time, however, names which
appear in Sion's statutes appear in these issues of Circuit. There was
one issue, however (no. 8, July 22nd, 1956), which contained an
article by a certain M. Defago (who appears on Sion's
Statutes as Treasurer) about astrology, explaining a system using
thirteen astrological signs rather than twelve. The thirteenth sign is
one called
Ophiuchus, and is placed between Scorpio and Sagittarius.
The second issues of Circuit appeared in 1959 and are called the
Cultural
Periodical of the Federation of French Forces. Many of them have
disappeared. We found Numbers 2 (August 1959), 3 (September 1959), 5
(November 1959) and 6 (December 1959). Mathieu Paoli records the
existence of a Number 1 (July 1959) and a Number 4. In addition there
510
is mention of Number 8 in Le Charivari. It thus appears that someone
has removed certain issues.
The magazines contain articles on subjects ranging from Atlantis to astrology. Some
contain political predictions for the years ahead computed astrologically by Pierre
Plantard. On the reverse, all the magazines are stamped with the symbol of the
organisation and the stamp of "Plantard'. 32 Vazart, Abrege de 1'histoire des Francs, p.
271. 33 Paoli, Les Dessous, p. 94. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid." pp. 94 ff. 36 Ibid." p. 102. 37 Ibid."
p. 103. 38 Ibid." p. 112.
9 The Long-haired Monarchs
1 Cachet, Le Tombeau de Childeric ler, Dumas, Le Tombeau de Childeric. 2According to
Cachet, Le Tombeau de Childeric ler, p. 25, Leopold Wilhelm (who was also Grand
Master of the Teutonic Knights) kept twenty-seven of the bees for himself, while giving up
the rest. We may be speculating too far but it is interesting to note that the Prieure de
Sion at the time had twenty-seven command eries 30ur first inkling that Napoleon was
connected with this story came with the numerous references in the Dossiers' genealogies
which noted among their sources the work of an Abbe Pichon. Between 1805 and 1814,
Pichon completed a study of the Merovingian descent from Dagobert II until November
20th, 1809, when jean XXII des Plantard was born in Semelay (Nievre). His sources were
stated to be documents discovered following the French Revolution.
Additional information was contained in the Alpina publication of
Madeleine
Blancasall, which stated (p.1 ) that Abbe Pichon was commissioned by
Sieyes (Official of the Directory, 1795-9) and Napoleon. A
comprehensive body of material is contained in L'Or de Rennes pour un
511
Napoleon by Philippe de Cherisey, which is now on microfiche at the
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. Briefly Cherisey says that the Abbe.
Sieyes, via Pichon's researches on the captured royal archives, knew of
the survival of the Merovingians. He told the story to Napoleon, whom
he then urged to marry Josephine, the ex-wife of a Merovingian'
descendant,
Alexandre de Beauharnais. Napoleon later adopted her two children, who carried the
"blood royal'.
Later Napoleon commissioned Abbe Pichon (whose real name is said to
be
Francois Dron) to complete a definitive genealogy. Napoleon was
interested, among other things, in the indications that the Bourbon
dynasty was in fact illegitimate. And his coronation as Emperor of
the
French (not of France), in a ceremony with significant Merovingian resonances, is said to
be a result of Sieyes's and Pichon's studies.
If this is so, Napoleon was setting up a foundation for a renewed
Merovingian empire. Being childless by Josephine, he then married
Marie Louise, the daughter of the Habsburg Austrian Emperor, of
Merovingian descent. She bore his son, Napoleon II, who carried the
"blood royal' of the
Merovingians. The latter however died childless. But the future
Napoleon
III, son of Louis Bonaparte, and Hortense de Beauharnais (daughter
of
Josephine by her first marriage) also carried the "blood royal'.
Cherisey also implies coyly that Archduke Karl (brother of Napoleon's wife) was bribed to
lose the battle of Wagram in 1809 in exchange for part of the Merovingian treasure which
Napoleon had found in the Razes.
This treasure was later discovered at Petroassa in 1837, then a
Habsburg domain. Given the Merovingian descent of the Habsburgs, it is
clear to see why they would value it. 4 Carpenter, Folktale, Fiction
and Saga, pp. 112 ff. 5The Roman name for Artemis was Diana, and
another name for the Arduina cult was "Diana of the Ardennes'. A huge
statue to her existed until it was destroyed by Saint Vulfilau in the
sixth century. Her cult was a moon cult, with images of her carrying
the crescent moon. She was also considered to be the deity of
512
fountains and springs. The foundation of the Abbey of Orval, which
legend intertwines with a mystic spring, may well suggest some vestige of a
Diana/Arduina cult. See Calmet, "Des Divinites', pp. 25 ff. 6For example see Gregory of
Tours, History of the Franks, book V, eh. 44. 7 Wallace-Hadrill, The Long-haired Kings,
pp. 203 ff. 8 Ibid." p. 158.
9 Dill, Roman Society in Gaul, p. 88. 10 Wallace-Hadrill, The
Long-haired Kings, p. 1 71 . 11 The major sources for the life of
Dagobert II are Digot, Histoire de royaume dAustrasie, vol. 3, pp. 220
ff." and pp. 249 ff." (eh. xv) and pp. 364 ff.,
Folz, "Tradition hagiographique', and Vincent, Histoire fidelle de
St.
Sigisbert. 12 Lanigan, An Ecclesiastical History, vol. 3, p. 101.
13Hen ri Lobineau, Dossiers secrets, planche no. 1, 600-900;
Blancasall, Les
Descendants, p. 8 and tableau no. 1 . 14De Sede's statement receives
some support from the known facts about Saint
Amatus's life. He incurred the enmity of the same Ebroin, Mayor of
the
Palace to King Thierry III, who was behind the assassination of Dagobert II.
He was displaced from his bishopric at about the same time that
Dagobert returned to his rightful heritage. The coincidence of dates
could well reflect his involvement in Dagobert's return. Dagobert
would have been most likely to travel back to his kingdom via Saint
Amatus's bishopric. To travel directly up from the Razes would involve
travelling through the territory of
Thierry III, something he would have avoided. 15Hen ri Lobineau,
Dossiers secrets, planche no. 2, 1500-1650. Blancasall, Les
Descendants, p. 8. This treasure joins the list of the other treasures either once or still in
the Rennes-leChateau area. 16 Wallace-Hadrill.
The Long-haired Kings, p. 238. 17Called Satanicum in the Latin
charters, a name derived from a Temple to
Saturn once situated there. 1 8 See n. 1 6. 1 9For an exploration of the
513
cult see Folz, "Tradition hagiographique'. 20Digot, A." Histoire du
royaume dAustrasie, vol. 3, pp. 370 ff. 21 Interestingly Jules
Doinel, creator of the Gnostic Catholic Church and librarian at
Carcassonne, published in 1899 a short work deploring the displacement
of the Merovingians by the Carolingians. See Doinel, Note sur le Roi
Hilderik III. 22 Wallace-Hadrill, The Long-haired Kings, p. 246. 23
ibid." p. 248. 24 Einhard, Life of Charlemagne, p. 81. 25 Paoli, Les
Dessous, p. 111. 26Dago bert II was "rediscovered' in 1 646 by Adrien
de Valois. He was fully restored to the genealogies of the
Merovingians by the Jesuit Bollandiste
Henschenius, in Diatriba de tri bus Dagobertus, in 1655. See Folz,
"Tradition ~hagiographique', p. 33. It is interesting, given this lack
of knowledge of
Dagobert II at the time, that Robert Denyau mentions him in the
Calendarium
Martyrology appended to his Histoire .. . de Gisors, dated 1629. 27De
laude Cercle d'Ulysse, p. 4. This charter supposedly originates from
Villas Capitanarias later called Trapas, and relates to the foundation
of the monastery Saint Martin d'Albieres. We tried to locate the
charter without success. The archives of Capitanarias are held in the
Archives de 1"Aude, Series H. But the charter does not appear. Thus it
was with interest that we noted a letter to M. Jean Delaude, asking for
his source of information on the document. The writer of this letter
was a member of the
University of Line. Jean Delaude replied that the charter existed in
the
French National Archives, that it was uncatalogued, and that even with the help of an
archivist, it had taken him two months to trace it.
Although all such archival collections contain vast amounts of
uncatalogued material, he gave no information on how this charter could
be traced by anyone else. See
Cherisey, L'Enigme de Rennes, letters number 4 and 5 (1977). 28
Ponsich, Le Conflent, p. 244. 29lbid." fig. 1 . See also Vaissete,
514
Histoire generale de Languedoc, vol. 2 (notes), p. 276. 30Vaissete,
Histoire generate de Languedoc, vol. 3, pp. 4 ff. 31 The earliest
report of this legend appears in 1686, when Dr. Plot in his
Natural History of Staffordshire relates it, pp. 316 ff." during a
report on
Freemasonry. 32The title of Godfroi de Bouillon's duchy, Basse=
Lorraine, was dropped in 1 190, the suzeraines called themselves dukes
of Brabant. So the duchess of
Brabant is no doubt a variant of the duchess of Bouillon. 33The
standard French genealogical work is Anselm, Histoire genealogique et
chronologique, which details the history of the house of Boulogne in
vol. vi, pp. 247 ff. It is with Godfroi's grandfather, Comte
Eustache ler de
Boulogne, that the confusion begins. His father is not recorded, only
the name of his mother, Adeline, and her second husband, Ernicule,
Count of
Boulogne. Ernicule adopted the young Eustache, making him heir. His true father is lost
to history.
The Dossiers secrets (planche no. 2, 900-1200) record his true father
as
Hugues des Plantard ("Long Nose') who was assassinated (according to
Abbe
Pichon) in 1015.
10 The Exiled Tribe
1 Graves, White Goddess, p. 271 . 2 The full text is as follows:
UN JOUR LES DESCENDANTS DE BENJAMIN QUITTERENT LEUR PAYS, CERTA INS
RESTERENT, DEUX MILLE ANS APRES GODEFROY VI, DEMENT ROI DE
JERUSALEM
ET
FONDE L'ORDRE DE SION De cette legende merveilleuse qui ome 1 'histoire,
ainsi que 1 'architecture dun temple don't le som met se perd dans
I'immensite de 1 'esp ace et des temps, don't PoussIN a voulu ex primer
le mystere dans ses deux tableaux, les "Bergers d'Arcadie', se trou ve
sans doute lesecret du tres or devant lequel, les descendants pay sans
et bergeFs du fier sicambre, meditent sur "et in arcadia ego', et le
Roi
"Midas'. Avant 1200 a notre ere Un fait important est, 1'arrivee des
Hebreux dans la terre promise et leur Jente installation en Caanan.
515
Dans la Bible, au Deuteronome 33; il est dit sur BENJAMIN: C'est le
bien aime de 1 "Eternal, il habit era en se curite aupres de lui, 1 "Eternal le couvrira
toujours, et resid era entre ses epaules. -f- . II est encore dit a Josue 18 que le sort
donna pour heritage aux fils de BENJAMIN par mi les quatorze vines et leur villages:
JEWS de nos fours JERUSALEM avec ses trois points dun triangle:
GOLGOTHA SIGN et E3ETHANIE. 0 Et enfin il eSt. eCrlt, aux Juges 20 et 21:
"Aucun de nuus ne donnera sa fine pour femme a un Benjamite ... O
Eternel,
Dieu d'lsrael, pourquoi est-li arrive en Israel qu'il manque aujourd'hui une tribu d'lsrael' -JO
A la grande enigme de 1"Arc adie vlltGILE qui et ait dans lesecret des dieux, leve le voile
aux Bucoliques X-46/50: "Tu pro cul a patria (nee sit mihi credere tantum).
Alpinas, a, dura, nives et frigora
Rneni me sine sola vi des A, to ne frigora laedant! A tibi ne ten
eras glacies sec et asp era plan tas VIV
SIX PORTES Ou le sceau de 1 "Etoile, void les secrets des parchemins de
1"Abbe sAUNIEttE, Cure de Rennes-leChateau et qu'avant lui le grand ini
tie
PoussIN connaissait lorsqu'il rea lisa son oeuvre a la demande du PAPE, 1 'inscription sur
la torn be est la meme." - Lobineau, Dossiers secrets, planche no. 1 , 400-600. 3 Graves,
Greek Myths, vol. 1, p.
203, n. 1. 4Mich ell Sparta, p. 173. The Spartans worshipped both
Artemis and Aphrodite as a warrior goddess. The latter is the form
often assumed by Ishtar and
Astarte, indicating the probability of Semitic influence. 5 2 Maccabees 5:9. 6 1
Maccabees 1 2:21 . Semi tic was first coined in 1 781 by Schlozer, a German scholar, to
indicate a group of closely related languages. Those who spoke these tongues became
called "Semites'. The word derives ultimately from Shem, son of Noah.
If the mountain in question held a Jewish colony, it would have been
called the "Mountain of Shem'. But there is also a more mundane
possibility. The
Latin word "Semita' means path or way, and this alternative must be
516
considered, i i The Holy Grail
1 These very likely had some connection with Otto Rahn, see Chapter 2,
n. 9. 2Philippe of Flanders often visited Champagne, and in 1 182 tried
unsuccessfully to marry Marie of Champagne (daughter of Eleanor of
Aquitaine) who had been widowed the year before. Le Conte del Graal probably dates
from about this time.
There is a connection between the house of Alsace and that of Lorraine.
Gerard of Alsace, on the death of his brother in 1048, became the first
hereditary duke of Haut-Lorraine, today simply Lorraine. All
subsequent dukes of Lorraine traced their ancestry back to him. 3 It
seems that there may have been some Grail "source document' to which
Philippe of Flanders had access, and which formed the basis of both
Chretien's and Robert de Boron's romances. Professor Loomis says that one is forced to
assume a common source for the Quest and Robert de Boron's romance. He feels that
Robert de Boron was telling the truth when he referred to a book about the secrets of the
Grail which provided the bulk of his information. See Loomis, The Grail, pp. 233 ff. 4An
argument for this is put forward by Barber, R." Knight and Chivalry, p. 126. 5 Perlesvaus,
p. 359. 6 Ibid." p. 2. 7 Ibid." p.
214. 8 Ibid." p. 360. 9
Ibid." pp. 199 ff. to Ibid." p. 82. 11 Ibid." p. 89. 12 Ibid."
p. 268. 13
Ibid." p. 12. 14 Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, pp. 243 ff. 15 Ibid." p. 251. 16 Ibid."
p. 253. 17 Ibid." p. 129. 18 Ibid." p.
517
130. 19 Ibid." pp. 251 ff. 20 Ibid." p. 251, n. 11. 21 Ibid." p.
252. 22 Ibid." p. 252. 23Rahn, Croisade cont re le Graal, pp. 77
ff." and La Cour de Lucifer, p. 69. 24 Wolfram von Eschenbach,
Parzifal, pp. 263 ff. 25 Ibid." p. 264. 26 Ibid." p. 426. 27
Barral, Legendes Capetiennes, p. 64. 28lt is interesting that the
French city of Avallon dates back to Merovingian times. It was the
capital of a region, then a comte, which was part of the kingdom of
Aquitaine. It gave its name to the whole region the
Avallonnais. 29 Greub, "The Pre-Christian Grail
Tradition', p. 68. 30Ha levi Adam and the Kabbalistic Tree, pp. 194,
201. Fortune, Mystical (Zabalah, p. 188. 31 It is sometimes said that
the Christian and Cabalistic traditions did not come together until the
fifteenth century in the hands of such writers as
Pico delta Mirandola. However, the Perlesvaus would seem to prove that they had fused
by the beginning of the thirteenth century. This is an area which needs more study. The
particular images in the Perlesvaus are those normally associated with the Cabalah as it is
used magically. 32 Queste del Saint Graal, p. 34. 33lt may perhaps be echoing the fact
that King Dagobert spent much of his youth in Britain. 34 (Zueste del Saint Graal,
introduction, pp. 16 ff.
12 The Priest-King Who Never Ruled
1 Smith, Secret Gospel, pp. 1 4 ff. 2 Ibid." pp. 1 '5 ff. 3 Ibid."
p. 16. 4lbid." pp. 16ff. The youth naked save for a linen cloth
appears later in
Mark 14:51-2. When Jesus is betrayed in Gethsemane, he is accompained by "a certain
young man, having linen cloth cast about his naked body'.
5The oldest manuscripts of the Scriptures, including the Codex
518
Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus, do not have the present ending to
Mark. In both of them Mark's gospel finishes at 16:8. Both date from the fourth century,
the time when the whole Bible was collected into one volume for the first time. 6
Maccoby, Revolution in Judaea, p. 99. 7Dodd, Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel,
p. 423. 8 Brandon, Jesus and the Zealots, p. 16. 9 Vermes, Jesus the Jew, p. 99.
10Charles Davis, reported in the Observer (London, March 28th, 1971),
p. 25. 11 Phipps, Sexuality of Jesus, p. 44. 12 Smith, Jesus the
Magician, pp. 81 ff. 13Brown lee "Whence the Gospel According to
John', p. 192. 14 Schonfield, Passover Plot, pp. 119. 134 ff. 15
Ibid." p. 256. 16The standard tradition is given in Jacobus de
Voragine, The Golden Legend, in the Life of S. Mary Magdalen, pp. 73
ff. This dates from 1270. The earliest written form of this tradition
would appear to be the "Life of Mary
Magdalen' by Rabanus (776-856), Archbishop of Mainz. It is in The
Antiquities of Glastonbury, by William of Malmesbury, that the extension o the legend
Joseph of Arimathea coming to Britain first occurs. It is often considered a later addition
to William's account.
1 7Vermes. Jesus the Jew, p. 21 , mentions that in Talmudic sayings the
Aramaic noun denoting carpenter or craftsman nag gar stands for learned
man or scholar. 18Maccoby, Revolution in Judaea, pp. 57 ff." quotes
Philo of Alexandria describing Pilate as "cruel by nature'. 19 Cohn,
H." Trial and Death of Jesus, pp. 97 ff. 20AII scholars concur that
no such privilege existed. The purpose of the fiction is to increase
the guilt of the Jews. See Brandon, Jesus and the
Zealots, p. 259, Cohn, H." Trial and Death of Jesus, pp. 166 ff.
(Haim Cohn is an ex-attorney-general of Israel, member of the Supreme
Court, and lecturer on historical law), and Winter, P." On the Trial
of Jesus, p. 94. 21 As Professor Brandon says (Jesus and the Zealots,
519
p. 328) all inquiry concerning the historical Jesus must start from
the fact of his execution by the Romans for sedition.
Brandon adds that the tradition of his being "King of the Jews' must be
accepted as authentic. In view of its embarrassing character, the
early
Christians would not have invented such a title. 22 Maccoby,
Revolution in Judaea, p. 216. 23 Brandon, Trial of Jesus, p. 34. 24
Joyce, Jesus Scroll, p. 106. 25For crucifixion details see Winter, On
the Trial of Jesus, pp. 62 ff." and
Cohn, H." Trial and Death of Jesus, pp. 230 ff. 26 See Schonfield,
Passover Plot, pp. 154 ff." for details. 27An argument for this
identification is given by Allegro, The Copper
Scroll, pp. 100 ff. 28 Cohn, H." Trial and Death of Jesus, p. 238. 29See The Interlinear
Greek-English New Testament, p. 214 (Mark 15:43, 45). 30Joyce, Jesus Scroll. The
author claims that while in Israel he was asked to help smuggle a stolen scroll from the
Masada excavations out of the country.
Although he refused, he claims to have seen the scroll. It was signed
Yeshua ben Ya'akob ben Gennesareth, who described himself as eighty
years old and added that he was the last of the rightful kings of
Israel (p. 22). The name, when translated into English, becomes Jesus
of Gennesareth, son of
Jacob. Joyce identifies the author as Jesus of Nazareth.
13 The Secret the Church Forbade
1 Eisler, Messiah Jesus, pp. 606 ff. 2 Chadwick, The Early Church, p. 125. 3
Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, vol. 7, pp. 1 78 ff . 4See Halsberghe, The Cult of Sol
Invictus. The author explains that this cult was brought to Rome in the third century A.D.
by the Emperor Elagabalus.
When Aurelian introduced his religious reform it was in fact a
re-establishment of the cult of Sol Invictus as originally introduced.
5218 for, 2 against. The Son was then pronounced identical with the
Father. 6 It was not until 384 that the Bishop of
520
Rome called himself "Pope' for the first time. 7There is a
possibility that some may be discovered. In 1976 a large repository of
old manuscripts was discovered at the monastery of Saint
Catherine on Mount Sinai. The find was kept quiet for some two years before news was
leaked to a German newspaper in 1978. There are thousands of fragments, some dating
from before A.D. 300, including eight missing pages from the Codex Sinaiticus now in the
British Museum. The monks who hold the bulk of the material have granted access only
to one or two Greek scholars.
See International Herald Tribune (April 27th, 1978). 8 Gospel of
Peter, 5:5. 9 Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ, 2:4. 10Maccoby,
Revolution in Judaea, p. 129. The author adds that the portrayal of
Jesus as anti-Pharisee was probably part of the attempt to show him as a rebel against
the Jewish religion rather than as a rebel against Rome. 1 1 Brandon, Jesus and the
Zealots, p. 327. See also Vermes, Jesus the few, p. 50, "Zealot or not, Jesus was certainly
charged, prosecuted and sentenced as one." 12 Allegro, Dead Sea Scrolls, p. 167. 13
Ibid." p. 175. 14 Josephus, Jewish War, p. 387. 15 Ibid." p. 387.
16 Ibid." appendix, p. 400. 17 Eisler, Messiah Jesus, p. 427. 18
Ibid." p. 167. 19 Irenaeus, Five Books .. . against
Heresies, p. 73. 20Koran, 4:157. See also Parrinder, Jesus in the
(2ur'an, pp. 108 ff. 21 Pagels, Gnostic Gospels, pp. xvi ff. 22The
Second Treatise of the Great Seth, in Robinson, J." Nag Hammadi
Library in English, p. 332. 23The Gospel of Mary, in Robinson, J." Nag
Hammadi Library in English, p. 472. 24 Ibid." p. 473. 25 Ibid. 26The
521
Gospel of Philip, in Robinson, J." Nag Hammadi Library in English, p.
140. 27 Ibid." pp. 135 ff. 28 Phipps, Was Jesus Married?" pp. 136
ff. 29 The Gospel of Philip, in Robinson, J.,
Nag Hammadi
Library in English, p. 138. 30 Ibid." p. 139. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid." p.
148.
14 The Grail Dynasty
1 Parrinder, Jesus in the Qur'an, pp. 110 ff. 2 Blancasall, Les Descendants, p. 9. 3
Koran, 4:157. 4There was the sacred Bull of Meroe, at Heliopolis. That bulls were
regarded highly by the Sicambrians is shown by the fact that a gold bull's head was found
buried with Childeric, the father of Clovis. 5Hen ri Lobineau, Dossiers secrets, planche
no. 1, 950-1400, n. 1. 6 Rabinowitz, "De Migrantibus'. 7 Zuckerman, Jewish Princedom,
pp. 36 ff. 8 Zuckerman, Jewish Princedom, p. 59. 9 Ponsich, "Le Conflent', p. 244, n. 10.
See also Levillain,
"Nibelungen', year 50 (1938) genealogy facing p. 46. 10 Zuckerman,
Jewish Princedom, p. 81. 11 Ibid." p. 197. 12 William, Count of
Orange, The Crowning of Louis, p. 4 (9). 13 Part of it now forms "The
Cloisters' in New York. 14 Saxer,
Marie Madeleine, vol. 2, p. 41 2. The cult, observing the day of January 19th, dates from at
least A.D. 792-5. 15 Zuckerman, Jewish Princedom, p. 64. 16 Ibid." p. 58. 17Pange,
Maison de Lorraine, p. 60.
15 Conclusion and Portents for the Future
1 Lacordaire, St. Mary Magdalen, p. 185. 2Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th edn (1972),
Crown and Regalia, fig. 2. 3 Nilus, Protocols, no.
24. 4 Peguy, Charles, "La Tapisserie de Sainte
522
Genevieve', in Oeuvres poetiques completes (Paris, 1.957), p. 849. 5
Saint Sigisbert was the father of Dagobert
II.
Appendix: The Alleged Grand Masters of the Prieure de Sion
"ISee Digot, P." Notre-Dame-de-Sion, p. 8. We obtained a copy of the
original charter of this Order, the records being held in the
Bibliotheque
Municipale, Nancy. 2 Fedie, Le Comte de Razes, p. 119. 3 Birch, Life
of Robert Boyle, p. 274. 4 Ibid. 5See Manuel, Portrait of Isaac
Newton, and. Dobbs, Foundations of Newton's
Alchemy. 6Newton was also a supporter of the Socinians,_ a religious
group who believed that Jesus was divine by office rather than by
nature. They were
Arian in orientation. Newton himself was described as an Arian. 7
523
Perey, Charles de Lorraine, p. 287. Index
Page numbers in italics refer to Notes and References
Acre, 68, 127Arcons, Cesar d', 92
Adam, Abbot of Orleans, 127 Arianism. 45, 255, 263, 408-9,
Alaric the Great, 35 516
Albi, 45Arimathea. Joseph of, 299, 362,
Albigensian Crusade, 33, 42-3, 375-6, 390 50-1 Arius, 407
Albigensians, see Cathars Arnaldus, Prior, 113
Alchemy, 1 55, 31 1 , 455, 456-7 Arques, 39. 41
Alexandria, Athanasius, Bishop Arsenal Library, Paris, 154-5 of, see
Athanasius Ashmole, Elias, 147
Alexandria, Clement, Bishop of, Athanasius, Bishop of Alexan see
Clement dria, 333
Alpine, Grande Lodge, 97, 104, Auvergne, Bernard d\ 275 218, 238Axel.
see Villiers, PA." Comte de
Alsace, Gerard d'. 510
Alsace, Philippe d', Count of 1 "Isle Adam
Flanders, 300, 510
Amatus, Saint, Bishop of Sion, Bannockburn, Battle of, 74 262, 506
Baphomet, 29
Andrea, Johann Valentin, 125, Bar, Catherine de, 453 133, 134, 145,
147, 453; (hem- Bar, Edouard de, Count, 133, ical Wedding of Christian
168,443
Rosenkreuz, 125, 145, 430 Bar, lolande de. 133, 447-8
Anjou, Count of, 85 Bar, Jean de, 444
Anjou, Fulques, Count of, 316 Bar, Jeanne de, 444
Anjou, house of, 316 Bar, Louis de, Cardinal, 447
Anjou, lolande d', 140 Barabbas. Jesus, 368-71
Anjou, Rene d', 133, 138-40, Barberie, Chateau. 184-5, 217, 168, 299,
430, 446-7 223
Anson, George, 191 Barres, Everard des, 131 ; 491
Antoine 1"Ermite, 96, 97; Un Barrbs, Maurice, 463; La Colline
Tresor merovingien a Rennes- inspiree, 161 leChateau, 103-4 Basilides,
401
Apocrypha, 389-90 Baudouin I, King of Jerusalem,
Arc, Jeanne d'. 139-40 61, 111, 116-17
Arcadia, 140-1, 249-50, 285-9 Belle-Isle, Marquis of, 187
524
Arcadia, see Sannazaro, Jacopo Benedict X, Pope, 71 Benjamin, Tribe
of, 282-7, 365 Boulogne, Eustache, Count of,
Beta VI, 276see Eustache, Count of
Bernard, Saint, 49, 88-9, 1 18 In Boulogne
Praise of the New Knighthood, Bourdon, Raynier, 128 63 Boyle, Robert,
133, 134. 148,
Besalou, Miron 'le Levite', 453-5, 492
Count of, see Miron 'le Levite' Bran the Blessed, 82, 297
Bethania, Villa (Rcnnes-le- Brandon, Professor S. G. F." 366
Chateau), 28-9,32"Brown lee Professor William, 170, 204, 361 359
Bethanie, "arch', 361 Bruno, Giordano, 452
Bethany, Mary of, 352-;i Buonarroti, Filippo Michele, 493
Beziers, 43Burros, Lionel, 216-18
Bezu, 25, 91
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, Cabalism, 44, 318-19 96-7, 103-4Calve.
Emma, 27, 42, 159,464
Bieil. Abbe, 26Camisa rds 51, 150, 458
Bigou, Abbe Antoine, 25, 28, Campagne-sur-Aude, 92 428 Cana, wedding
at, 348, 364
Blancassal, Madeleine (Les De- Carcassonne, 41 scend ants merovingiens
et Carcassonne, Bishop of, 205 1'enigme du Razes wisigoth), 97
Carpocratians, 335-6
Blanche, Queen of Castile, 224 Castelnau, Pierre de, 50
Blanchefort. 484 Castile, Blanche, Queen of, see
Blanchefort, Bertrand de, 25, 34"Blanche 69, 91, 130. 425, 484, 490
Cathars, 33-4, 41-58; doctrine,
Blanchefort, family of, 107 46-9; origins, 51-2; treasure,
Blanchefort. Marie, Marquise 52, 54, 57-8; links with Tern d'Hautpoul
de, 28, 30 plats, 69-70; see also Albigen
Blavatsky, H. P." 77 sign Crusade
Bogomils, 52Catholic Modernist Movement,
Bois, Jules, 159 38, 196-7
Bonhomme, Pierre, 212 Catholic Rose-Croix, the Temple
Boniface VIII, Pope, 71 and the Grail, Order of the,
Bonne Soiree, 223 160-1; see also Rosicrucians
Boron, Robert de (Roman de Catholic Weekly of Geneva, 216
I'Estoire dou Saint Graal), 300-1 Gercle d'Ulysse, Le, see Delaude,
Botticelli (Sandra Filipepi), jean 133, 134, 144, 448-9 Cevennes,
Prophets of, see
Boudet, Abbe Henri, 25, 42, Camisards 160, 204, 206, 429 Chalons,
Hugues de, 486
Bouillon, Duke of, 151, 1 78 Chalons, jean de, 486
Bouillon, Godfroi de, 1 07, Champagne, Count of, see 112-13, 11 4,
1 1 7-1 8. 278-9, Hugues, Count of Champagne 295, 41 9-20, 508 Champagne,
Countess of, see vergneBouillon, Henri de la Tour dAu-Marie, Countess
525
of Cham , Duke of, see Tour dAuvergne pagne Charlemagne, Emperor,
268-9 "Constantine, Donation of, see
Charnay, Geoffroi de, 73 "Donation of Constantine'
Chartres, Bishop of, 85-6 Constantine, Emperor, 266-7,
Chartres, Fulk de, 62, 83 385-9, 408
Chateaubriand, Franqois-Rene, Constantius, Emperor, 408 156 Conte dal
Gran], Le, see
Chaumeil, jean-Luc (Le Tres6r Chretien de Troyes du triangle d'or),
205, 225, 233"Copper Scroll', see Dead Sea
Chemical Wedding of Christian Scrolls
Rosenkreuz, see Andrea, Corbu, Noel, 31
Johann V. Crescent, Order of the, 447
Cherisey, Philippe de, 224-5, Cyrene, Simon of, 401 Chevalerie d'lnstitutions et Dagobert
II, King:
Regies Catholiques, d'Union treasure, 34, 262; bloodline,
Independante et Tradition106. 329; biography, 259-64; ali ste 210assassination, 263-4,
506;
Childeric I, King, 248 erased from history, 269-71 ,
Childeric III, King, 248, 266 507; account of his life, 432
Chretien de Troyes, 87; Le Conte Dagobert, Saint, Church of dal Graal,
299-300 (Stenay), 264
Christ, Knights of, see Knights of Dead Sea Scrolls, 393; Copper
Christ Scroll. 87
Christian Unions, 147 Debussy' Claude, 133-4,
Christian, Paul, see Pitois. Jeanl 58-61, 162, 464-5
B. Dee. John, 145. 452,492
Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Defagot, Pierre; 212
Amended, see Newton. Sir De Gaulle, Charles, see Gaulle,
Isaac Ch. de
Circuit, 210, 239. 240, 241, 501-3Delaude'Jean (LeCercle
Citeaux, Abbot of, 50 d'Ulysse), 96-7, 428
Claverhouse, John, Viscount of Delaval, jean, 212
Dundee, 74 Delmas, Abbe, 481-2
Clement, Bishop of Alexandria, De Molay Society, 77
334 Denarnaud, Marie, 24, 30-1 ,
Clement V, Pope (Bertrand de 204, 429
Goth), 71, 76, 93 Denyau, Robert, 126, 507
Clement XII, Pope, 192 Desaguliers, jean, 150, 154. 456
Clovis I, King, 254-7. 422 Descadeillas, Rene, 96
Cocteau, jean, 133, 161-4, 465 Descendants merovingiens et
Colline inspiree, La, see Barres,1'enigme du Razes wisigoth.
Maurice Comenius,see
Komensky, Adam Les, see Blancassal, Made
Committees of Public Safety, lei ne 232, 240 Doinel, Jules, 41, 159-60,
507
526
Compagnie du Saint-Sacrament, "Donation of Constantine', 266-7 see
Saint-Sacrament, Corn-Dossiers secrets, see Lobineau, pagnie du Henri
527
Dron, Franqois, see Pinchon, Fludd, Robert, 133, 134, 137,
Abbe 145,452-3
Ducaud-Bourget, Francois'Fludd, Sir Thomas, 452
Abbe, 220-1, 223, 224, 229 Forces Frani-aises, Federation
Duillier, Nicolas Fatio de, see des, see Federation des Forces
Fatio de Duillier, N. Franqaises
Du Moulin, Pierre, 453 Fouquet, Charles, Archbishop of
Dundee, John Claverhouse, Vis- Narbonne, 180, 185 count of, see
Claverhouse, Fouquet, Louis' Abbe,38
John 185-6
Dury, John, 454Fouquet, Nicolas, 39, 185-6
Frederick' Elector Palatine of
Edward II, King of England, 74 the Rhine, 145-6
Eleazar, 397 Freemasons, 76-7, 151, 153;
Elisachar, Abbot, 411 "Scottish Rite', 149,205;
Elizabeth, Grand Duchess of "Strict Observance', 1 51 , 201 ;
Russia, 198 excommunication, 192; ori
Encausse, Dr. Gerard, see gins, 276
Papas Fronde, 178, 427
Ermite, Antoine 1 ', see Antoine Fulques, Count of Anjou, see
1"ErmiteAnjou, Fulques, Count of
Eschenbach, see Wolfram von
EschenbachGaulle, Gen. Charles de, 232
Essenes, 393-5, 398 Gellone, Guillem de, Count of
Este, Anne d', Duchess of Gisors'Razes, 272-4, 296, 317, 413, 173 416
Estoire dou Saint Graal, Roman Gentleman's Club of Spalding, de 1', see
Boron, Robert de 1 50. 1 54, 456
Eustache, Count of Boulogne, Girard, Abbot of Orleans, 127 41 9Gi sors
105, 121, 126, 156, 170,
Evreux, Blanche d', 133, 445 187, 444
Gisors, Anne d'Este, Duchess of,
Fakhar ul Islam, 99 see Este, Anne d'
Fatio de Duillier, Nicolas, 150, Gisors, family of, 107, 442 455-6,
458Gi sors Guillaume de, 128-9,
Federation des Forces Fran133,135,443 qaises, 240Gi sors jean de, 123,
127, 133,
Ferri, Lord of Sion-Vaudemont, 135, 441 448 Gnosticism, 384, 399-404
Feugere, Pierre, 100, 102 "Gnostic Gospels', see Nag
Fidelite, L'Ordre de la, 447 Hammadi Scrolls
Filipepi, Sandro, see Botticelli Gonzaga, Claire de, 449
Flamel, Nicolas, 133, 134, 155, Gonzaga, Ferrante de (Ferdi 313, 430,
445-6, 457 nand de Gonzague), 133, 144,
Flanders, Philippe d'Alsace,
Count of, see Alsace, Philippe 173, 450-1 de Gonzaga, Louis, see
Nevers,
528
Flegetanis, 308 Louis de Gonzague, Ferdinand de, see Habsburg, Leopold
Wilhelm von,
Gonzaga'Ferrante de 248
Gospels'Habsburg, Maximilian von, see disparity between New'resta-Lorraine, Maximilian
dement Gospels, 332- 3; sup pres- Habsburg, Dr.
Otto von, 107, 434 sion of sections of, 334; historyHabsburg-Lorraine,
house of, of 343-6; Mark's Gospel, 344; 1 07, 434
Luke's Gospel, 344; Matthew's Hartlib, Samuel, 147, 454
Gospel, 344; John's Gospel, Hautpoul de Blanchefort, Marie, 345, 358;
Gospel of Peter, Marquise d', see Blanchefort, 389-90; Gospel of the
Infancy Marie, Marquise d'Hautpoul of Jesus Christ, 390; Gospel of
Henry of Lorraine, Duke of
Thomas, 402; Gospel of Mary, Guise, see Lorraine, Henry of 403; Gospel
of Philip, 404 Henry II, King of England, 121-2
Gospels, Gnostic, see Nag Ham- Henry III, King of England, 66-7 math
Scrolls Hermit Peter the, see Peter the
Goth, Bertrand de, see Clement Hermit
V, PopeHieron du Val d'Or, 206-8
Goth, Seigneur de, 93 Hisler, Anne Lea, 231
Gothic, Marquis of, 274 History and Practice of Magic,
Grail, 295-330; connection with see Pitois, Jean B. Cathars, 34, 41,
56; Templars History of Secret Societies in the guardians of, 78;
brought to Army under Napoleon, see
France, 102; Rene d'Anjou Nodier, Charles and, 140, 430; romances,
Hoffet, Emile, 26, 37, 38, 159, 297-317; "Sang Real', 320 197, 464,
498
Grail family, 312-17 Holy Grail, see Grail
Grande Lodge Alpine, see Holy Roman Empire. 207
Alpina, Grande Lodge Hospitallers of Saint John, 74, 75
Grimoald, 259 Hugo, jean, 162
Grousset, Rene, 111 Hugo, Victor, 133, 134, 156, 195,
Gruter'Janus,452 200,462-4
Guafta, Marquis Stanislas de, Hugues. Count of Champagne, 159 85, 86,
89,90,116,118
Guercino, Giovanni Francesco, Hand, Karl Gottlieb von, 151-3 188-9
Guise, Charles. Duke of, 177, 453lnfancy of Jesus Christ, Gospel of
Guise, Franqois, Duke of, 173 the, 390
Guise. Henry of Lorraine, Duke Innocent II. Pope, 64 of, see
Lorraine, Henry of Innocent III, Pope, 50, 76
Guise, house of, 173-5, 427 Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons
Guise. Marie de, 145
Guzman, Dominic, 50 (Libros(2uinque Adversus
HaeresesJ, 384
Haak, Theodore, 147 Islam, Fakhar ul, see Fakhar ul
Habsburg, house of, 207, 428 Islam
Habsburg, Johann von, Arch- Isle Adam, Philippe Auguste duke, 29, 36.
529
429 Villiers'Comte de 1', see Villiers, P. A.
Joyeuse'Henriette-Catherine.
Ivanhoe, see Scott, Sir Walter 177-8
Judaea,339
James III, King of Scotland, 148 lunge Titurel, Der, see Wolfram
Joanne d'Arc, see Arc, Joanne d' von Eschenbach
Jerusalem:
Temple of Solomon, 34, 87, Killiecrankie Battle of, 74 424; Templars
in, 62; fall of Knights of Christ, 75
Temple, 68; map, 84; "Stables Koker, Gaston de, 100, 102 of Solomon',
87; treasure, 87, Komensky'Adam (Comenius), 90; Abbey of Notre Dame
duMont de Sion, 1 1 2 Koran, 409
Jesus Christ:
Cathar view of, 47; blood-line, LabouSsse-Rochefort'Auguste 329; birth,
332; crucifixion, de, 156 333, 366-8, 371-6; marital ha Fontaine, jean
de, 182 status, 346-55; dynasty of. Languedoc, 43-5, 69 362-6; Gospel
of the Infancy of Lawrence, Louis, 40
Jesus Christ, 390 Lazarus, 336, 354-62
Jewish War, The, see Josephus, Lefebvre, Marcel, Archbishop,
Flavius 220-13,501
Jews: Lenoncourt, Cardinal of, 143 in Languedoc, 50; members of
Lenoncourt, Count of, 447
Prieure de Sion, 234; in Lenoncourt, Henri de, Count,
Arcadia, 285-9; diaspora, 99. 105; see also Lobineau, 400; under
Merovingians, Henri 410-1 1 ; under Moors in Spain, Leo XIII, Pope, 197
413-14 Levi, Eliphas, 155,463
Joan of Arc, see Arc, Joanne d' Levrier Blanc, L'Ordre du, 447
Johannites, 80 Lhomoy, Roger, 170-1
John, Gospel of, 345-6, 358 Lichfield, Earls of, 191
John XXIII, Pope (Angela Ron- Life of Saint Remy, 255 calli), 164-5
Liney, Canon Alfred Leslie, 38,
Joinville family, 88 197
Joinville, jean de, 52, 485 Lobineau'Henri(Dossiers
Joly, Maurice, 200 secrets), 98, 105,"1-12,
Joseph bon Matthias, see Jose131-2, 216; see also Lenon phus. Flavius
court, Henri de
Joseph of Arimathea, see Ari- Locke, John, 454 ma thea Joseph of
Lohengrin, see Wolfram von
Josephus, Flavius (Joseph bon Eschenbach
Matthias). 395-6, 398; The Longueville, Duke of, 146, 178
Jewish War, 396 Longueville family, 145
"Josephus, Slavonic', 39!) Lorraine, 74; map, 172
530
Journal Officiel, 209 Lorraine, Charles de, 133, 136, 153-4, 458-9
Marie, Countess of Champagne,
Lorraine, Charles de, Cardinal, 299 173 Marie Antoinette, Queen of
Lorraine, Crossof,174,431,447, France, 428 494Marie Caroline, Queen of
Naples
Lorraine, Francoisde, Holyand Sicily, 461
Roman Emperor, 154, 456 Mark, Gospel of, 335-8, 343-4
Lorraine, Henry of, Duke of Martel, Charles, 266, 414
Guise, 420 Mary, Gospel of, 403
Lorraine, house of, 168, 173-5 Mary Magdalene, see Magdalene Mary
Lorraine, jean de, 494 Mary of Bethany, see Bethany,
Lorraine, Maximilian, de, 133, Mary of 459-60 Masada, 378, 396-8
Louis VII, King of France. 66, Mathers, MacGregor, 159 119 Matthew,
Gospel of, 344
Louis XI, King of France, 429 Mazarin, Jules, Cardinal, 178,
Louis XIV, King of France, 39, 179 183 Medici, Cosimo de', 141
Louis Philippe. "Citizen King', Memphis, Oriental Rite of, see 464
Oriental Rite of Memphis
Luke. Gospel of, 344 Merovee, King, 246-7, 251-2,
Luxembourg, house of, 443 329
Lyons, Irenaeus. Bishop of, see Merovingians, 106, 215, 216,
Irenaeus 245-81, 322; origins, 248-50; in Gaul, 251; Merovee, 251;
Mabinogion, 82, 297 polygamy, 253-4; Clovis I,
Maeterlinck, Maurice, 27, 159 254-7; pact with Roman Cath
Magdala, Tour(Rennes-le-olic Church, 256;
Dagobert II,
Chateau), 28, 30, 204 257-65; end of dynasty, 266-7
Magdalene, Mary: Michelet. Jules (Le Proces des "Notre Dame', 101-2;
brings Templiers), 195
Grail to France, 299, 423; pos- Midi libre, 212-13 sible wife of Jesus Christ, 329"Mi ron 'le
Levite', Count of 349-52; place of death, 362;
Besalou, 411
Gospel of Mary. 403-4; cult of, Mithras, cult of, 387 Malachi, 166Malay, Jacques de, 72,
73, 76;
Mallarme, Stephane, 27, 159, see also De Malay Society 465Moliere (Jean
Baptiste Poquelin),
Malory Sir Thomas (Le Morte 183 d'Arthur), 298Mont hard Andi e de, 87,
89,91,
Mani,407 116, 118, 130,491
Manichaeanism, 45, 406. 407 Montdidier, Nivard de, 1 16 482 Montfort,
Simon de, 50
Map, Walter, 81Montpensier, Charles de, Con Marcion, Bishop, 401 ne
table de Bourbon, 133, 173,
531
Marcionites, 45 450 Montpezat family, 434 Order of Saint Lazarus,
see
Montpezat, Henri de, 281 Saint Lazarus
Montsalvat, 57 Ordre de la Fidelite,see
Montsegur, 51 , 53-5, 31 2, 482 Fidelite, Ordre de la
Moors, 413 Ordre de la Rose-Croix Veritas,
Moray, Robert, 147 see Rose-Croix Veritas
Moulin, Pierre du, see Du Ordre du Levrier Blanc, see
Moulin, P. Levrier Blanc
Oriental Rite of Memphis, 192,
Nag Hammadi Scrolls (Gnostic 497
Gospels), 401 -20rleans. 1 1 9-20, 1 27,1 71 ;
Names, Georges de, Abbe, 500 Abbot Adam of. 127; Abbot
Napoleon, Emperor, 248-9 Girard of, 126
Napoleons. The, see Nodier, Orleans, Gaston d', 177-8
Charles "Ormus', 123, 192, 200
Narbonne, 415, 418 Ornolac, 57
Navarre, Blanche de, see Orval, 114, 117-8, 127, 176
Evreux, Blanche d'
Nazorites, 341, 411 Palestine:
Nevers, Louis de (Louis de map. 64; in time of Jesus,
Gonzaga), 133, 144, 174, 338-43 451-2Paoli, Mathieu (Les Dessous
New Templars, Order of the, 77 dyne ambition politique),
Newton, Sir Isaac, 133, 134, 150,287_44, 269, 504 454, 455-8, 516; The
Chronol- pa pus (Dr. Gerard Encausse), ogy of Ancient Kingdoms
Amended, 456 1 59, 1 98, 200, 498
Nibelungenlied, 321-2 Parzival, see Wolfram von
Nicea. Council of, 388, 408 Ese;henbach
Nilus, Sergei. 199 Pavilion, Nicolas, Bishop of Alet,
Nodier, Charles. 133, 154-8, 180 461-2, 463; A History of Paten
family, 442
Secret Societies in the Army Payee, Hugues de, 61, 63, 64, 65, under
Napoleon, 1 57; The 80, 86, 1 1 3, 1 1 6, 1 1 8, 483. 486,
Napoleons, 462 490. 491
Nostradamus, 176, 494-5 Peguy, Charles, 431
Peladan, Josephin, 160
Cher, jean-Jacques, 180 Pepin the Fat, 263
Oman Mosque of, 160 Pepin III, King, 266, 267-8,
Ordenstaat, 69 414-15
Order of the Catholic Rose- Peraud, Hugues de, 486
Croix, the Temple and the Pereille, Raimon de, 57
Grail, see Catholic Rose-Croix Perlesvaus, 302-5
Order of the Crescent, see Peter. Gospel of, 389-90
Crescent, Order of the Peter the Hermit, 114,117, 489
Order of the New Templars, see Philadelphes, 157, 492
532
New Templars, Order of the Philadelphians, 150 Philip, Gospel of, 404
Radclyffe, Charles, 133, 148-50.
Philippe, Monsieur, 198 456, 458
Philippe II, King of France, 121 Rahn, Otto, 483
Philippe IV (Le Bel), King of Ramsay, Andrew' Chevalier
France, 70-1 , 73, 76 1 50-1 , 456
Pidoye, Guillaume, 128 Razes, Comte of, 33, 271, 276
Pierre THermite, see Peter the Razes, Giselle de, 260-1
Hermit Razes. Guillem de Gellone, Count
Pilate, Pontius, 339, 375 of, see Gellone, Guillem de
Pinchon, Abbe (Francois Iron), Remy, Saint, 255, 256 249. 505 Rennes-leChateau:
Pitois, Jean Baptiste (Paul general description in 1885,
Christian), 155. 194, 497: His24; Church of Marie-Made tory and
Practice of Magic, lei ne 25, 27, 29-30, 204; Tour 155 Magdala, 28, 30,
204; Villa
Pius X'Pope,1 97Bethania, 28. 31 , 1 70, 204,
Plantagenets, 31 6 361 ; map, 31 ; history, 32-3;
Plantard family, 1 07, 1 84, 1 88, Rhedae, 33,257.261 ; Un 1 89, 271 , 279,
434, 496 Tresor merovingien a Rennes
Plantard, Hugues de, 279, 419, leChateau,seeAntoine 508 VErmiie
Plantard, jean des, 443 Rennes-les-Bains, 156
Plantard de Saint-Clair, Pierre, Rhedae, seeRennes-leCha 96, 212, 224,
230-7, 501 teau
Plantavelu, Bernard, 271, 273 Richelieu, Cardinal, 176
Poher, Alain, 213 Revue de 1 "Orient Latin, 195
Poher, Arnaud de, Count, 213 Rey, Emmanuel, Baron, 195
Poher family, 107 Richard I, King of England, 122,
Pontifical Biblical Commission, 484 197 Ridefort, Gerard de, 68.
120.
Poor Knights of Christ and the 490
Temple of Solomon, Order of Roman de 1"Esto ire dou Saint the, see
Templar, Knights Graal, see Boron, Robert de
Poussin, Nicolas, 27, 38, 185; Roman de Perceval, Le, see "Les Bergers d'Arcadie', 27,
Chretien de Troyes, Le Conte 39. 143, 186, 188, 191 del Grua]
Proces des Templiers, Le. see Roncalli, Angelo, Cardinal, see
Michelet, Jules John XXIII, Pope
Prophets of Cevennes, see Rose + Croix, Salon de la, see
Camisards Salon de la Rose + Croix
Protocols of the Elders of Sion, Rose-Croix, see Rosicrucians 199-203, 431. 499 Rose-
Croix Veritas, Ordre de la.
Provins, Guiotde. 308 124-5
Public Safety, Committees of, seeRosenkreuz, Christian, 125, 144;
Committees of Public Safety Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz,
see Andrea,
533
Queste del Saint Graal, 322 Johann V. Rosicrucians (Rose-Croix), 125-
Septimania, 412-18 6, 134, 182; "Rosicrucian Serpent rouge, Le, 100-1
Manifestos', 144-8; see also Sforza'Francesco, Duke of
Catholic Rose-Croix, Order of Milan, 447
Rosslyn, 190. 441 Sforza, Ludovico, 449
Roussillon, Solomon, Count of, Shugborough Hall, 191 see.
SolomonSigisbert, Saint, 432, 516
Roux, S." 218-19, 500 Sigisbert IV, King, 100, 270, 271
Royal Society, 148, 492 Sigisbert VI, "Prince Ursus', 274-6
Sacred Book of Abraham the Simonof Cyrene, see Cyrene,
Jew, The, 313, 430, 445 Simon of
Saint-Aignan, Archambaud de, Sinclair family, 100, 190, 434 116
Sinclair, Lord James, Earl of
Saint-Clair family, 107, 442 Caithness, 160
Saint-Clair, lean de, 133. 444-5 Sion (Switzerland), 252, 317, 330
Saint-Clair, Marie de. 133, 441 Sion, Abbey of Notre Dame du
Saint-Clair, Pierre Plantard de, Montde, 112-13 see Plantardde
Saint-Clair, P. Sion, Mount, 112, 118
Saint Jean le Blanc, 119 Sion, Orderof, see Sion,
Saint John, Hospitallers of, see prieure de
Hospitallers of Saint John Sion, Prieure de, 1 06, 111 -243;
Saint Lazarus, Order of, 1 27 founding, 112, 1 1 6; at Orleans,
Saint-Maxent, Louis, 100, 102 119, 127; rift with Templars,
St. Omer, Bisol de, 116 120,126-7; "Ormus', 123-4;
Saint-Remy, Jean de, 141
Saint-Sacrement, Compagnie du, GrandMasters ("Nauton 179-83niers'),
133-67,219-20,224,
Saint-Samson, Prioryof441-65; command eries 170; (Orleans), 119, 171
Protocols of the Elders of Sion,
Saint Sulpice, Seminaryofl 99-203; statutes, 210-12, (Paris), 180, 182,
196 225-8; membership, 210; hier
Sainte-Colombe, 223 archy, 210-12, 227; modern
Sainville, Thomas de, 127 schism, 228-9; political ideas,
Salic Law, 412 240-3
Salon de la Rose + Croix, 161 Sion, Rock of, 193-4
Sannazaro, Jacopo (Arcadia), Sion, Saint Amatus, Bishop of, 143 see
Amatus, Saint
Satanicum, see Stenay Sion-Vaudemont, 448. 451
Sauniere, Berenger, 24-32, Sion-Vaudemont, Ferri,
Lord of, 204, 429, 481 see Ferri
Schidlof, Leo. 99, 216-18, 238 Sir Gawain and the Green
Schonfield, Professor Hugh, 361 Knight, 297
Scotland, Templars in, 74, 152 Smith, Professor Morton, 334,
Scott, Sir Walter (Ivanhoe), 59 357
Sede, G6rardde, 95, 111, 113, Societe de 1 "Orient Latin, 195 501 Sol
534
Invictus 386-7, 513 Solomon, Count of Roussillon, Maurice de la, 178
41 1 Tour dAuvergne, Henri de la,
Solomon, King of Brittany, 41 1 Duke of Bouillon, 145, 454 "Solomon,
Stables of, see Jeru- Trencavel family, 44
Salem Trencavel. Raymond-Roger,
Solomon, Temple of, see .Ig4_5
JerusalemTr(,sor du triangle d'or. Le, see
Soloviov, Vladimir, 199 (:haumeil, J.-L.
Spalding, Gentleman's Club of, Treesor merovingien ii Rennessee
Gentleman's Club of leChateau. Un, see Antoine
Spalding TErmite
Steiner, Rudolf. 77
Stenay, (Saianicum), 106, 145, Troyes, 86; Council of, 63 170, 178,
263, 443 Troyes see Chretien de Troyes
Stuart dynasty, 146, 149, 434 True History of Saint Sigisbert.
Stuart, Elizabeth, 146 The, see Vincent, Rev. Father
Sulpice, Saint. 30 Turin Shroud, 80
Turmel. Abbe, 197
Tafurs, 488-9Tyre, Guillaume de, 60-2. 84, Templar, Knights (Order of
the 1 1 5 Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon), 59-93,
"Ursus', 113
1 1 6-1 9, 1 20-2; treasure, 34, "Ursus, Prince', see Sigisbert VI 72; in
Jerusalem, 61; Council of
Troyes, 63-4; rules of conduct, Val d'Or, Hieron du, see 64; expansion, 64; wealth, 65,
llieron du Val d'Or 67; international power, 65-7;
Valentinus, 400 links with Cathars, fig-70; Vermes, Dr. Geza, 346
attacked by Philippe IV, 70-3; Vespucci, Georges Antoine, survive
outside France, 74-5; 448 occult powers, 76-7;Vipers, Gerard de, 486
"Baphomef, 79; bearded head, Villiers, Philippe Auguste, 79-82;
foundation date, 85-6; Comte de I' Isle Adam (Axel),
Grand Masters, 129-32, 153, 159, 464-5 491; Le Proces des Templiers
Vincent. Rev. Father (The True 195; in literature, 303. 309 History
of Saint Sigisbert),
Temple, William, 197 432
Templecombe, 80 Vincent de Paul, Saint, 1 80, 1 81
Teniers, David, 26, 28 Vinci, Leonardo da, 133, 134,
Teutonic Knights, 69, 75. 127, 144 459 Visigoths, 34-5
Theodoric (Thierry), 272, 416 Voisins, Pierre de, 92
Thomas, Gospel of, 402
Torigny, Robert de, 189, 4f)6 Wagner, Richard, 34
Toscane, Mathilde de, 1 14 Wilfrid, Saint, 260-2
535
Tour dAuvergne, Frederic- Wilkins, Dr. John, 147, 454Willehalm, see
Wolfram von Wurzburg, Johann von, 87
Eschenbach
Wolfram von Eschenbach, 56, Yates, Frances. 125,126,489 76. 273.
296; Parzival. 76, 305-18; Lohengrin, 277. 295, Zealots, 341-2, 370,
389-99 315: Der Junge Titurel, 317; Zuckerman, Professor Arthur,
Willehalm, 317 415-16
536
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